#9: I am 110% sure you don't care about how I've been
After reading "Words Don't Mean What They Mean" this week, I came to a strong realization. Maybe those sweet cashiers and cool salesmen were just lies? Yeah, I can see that confused look. Let me explain my thinking.
“Hey! How are you doing?”, is a quite common greeting to hear nowadays. Statements like these are normally a sign of undue respect, but there is one problem: are they genuine?
Let's say you are meeting an old friend after about 20 years of separation. "How are you doing?" is a conversation starter one can consider. But, in my opinion, it's a rhetorical question. There is no way one can respond anything besides "yes" to this question, or else...
Person 1: "Hey! It's been a good 20 years since we last talked! How've you been?"
Person 2: "Yeah for sure, we need to catch up! Also, I've been pretty bad"
Yeah, I can feel the tension through the screen. So, to avoid this series of unfortunate events, we respond with a bleak "yes".
Ok, fine. Maybe lying about this isn't quite a giant issue. The issue lies with the person asking, weirdly enough. Us humans have become so attuned to saying "how are you doing?" as a greeting, that we have almost stopped caring about how they really are doing. So if you hear that one barista at Starbucks say "how's it goin" when you walk in, it's probably because politeness is a part of the job training.
Now comes the argument of: is indirect speech necessary, or is it just a façade? I would have to qualify this. Yes, the politeness may be muscle memory. But, it does soften the tense environment when meeting a stranger, or ordering at a Starbucks, or even when reuniting with an old friend. Completely pulling out those polite greetings from the English language would be detrimental. But, this brings me back to my statement above: maybe those sweet cashiers and cool salesmen were just lies?
Yeah I'm definitely regretting deep-diving into this topic. Now, I can't stop thinking about that really nice Starbucks dude. There's a huge chance he didn't actually "love my Taylor Swift shirt". Dang it- 😐
First of all I really hope that he really did like your Taylor Swift shirt. I totally agree with how you qualified this statement. Without all the indirect speech interaction in the English language would constantly be extremely awkward and tense. I don’t think I would be able to survive that.
ReplyDeleteI loved your take on how the person asking “how are you” doesn’t necessarily care about how we actually are. This made me think about how we have become accustomed to responding with “good” or that but upgraded like “good, how are you”. Although this is a repetitive statement used everyday, I agree that it is still necessary because it softens the tense, awkward setting when meeting someone.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the way that you spoke about this topic! From the examples of Starbucks job training to just a conversation between close friends, it’s really important to recognize the need for polite greetings, however ingenuine, simply because of how ingrained they are into our daily lives.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Vidhi! I absolutely love your voice and how well it shines through in your post. I also really like your style choices with the hypothetical dialogue and italics. I love how conversational your post is - I feel like I'm just talking to you face-to-face right now. Honestly, I just like everything about your post - it was so well-written!
ReplyDeleteI like that this sounds similar to the way you talk, your personality and style of writing makes this blog fun to read! Also, I agree with your qualification on the idea of indirect speech, and your examples support your claim well.
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