Politeness [ Taste & Manners / Education ]
… social experience. Among an array of contemporary norms for social interaction, it provided one idealized vision of sociability, though practice often fell short of the ideal. Theorists disagreed about the fundamental psychology … in eighteenth-century Britain, and its meanings were actualized in many areas of social practice. It was an ideal of sociability but certainly not the only one, and, of course, as an ideal, its execution was often short of its aspirations. Even as an ideal of sociability, politeness implied competing versions of the social self. Finally, the word expanded in its referents beyond …
Civility | Conversation | Consumption | Periodicals
Encyclopedia