Differences in Manners

 

02/19/2022

Week 7 Response: “Differences in Manners”

What exactly are manners? The OED definition is “A person's social behaviour or habits, judged according to the degree of politeness or the degree of conformity to accepted standards of behaviour or propriety.” Something I find interesting about this definition is that we are judged according to our manners. That means that people will make decisions about a person’s character depending on how well their behavior “conforms to accepted standards of behavior”. It seems like the accepted manners of a culture could be very important to know! Manners, and what is considered polite or impolite, can vary greatly across different cultures. My daughter is interested in learning about Korean culture, and she shared a great example with me. In Korea when offered a drink, it is considered polite to accept the glass with two hands, and to turn your head when drinking. As an American, I found this interesting because these are actions that seem unnecessary in terms of being polite. It would be something important for me to know, however, if I went to Korea. I wouldn’t want to be considered a rude or impolite person.

As with other cultural differences, differences in manners could cause misjudgments in the classroom. I think a fun way to teach multi-cultural students about this would be to have a “manners day” or an “etiquette dinner”. The teacher could set up a table for dining, and share their cultures rules for manners, and the students could also share their cultures rules. Another idea for writing practice could be for the students to write a “Miss Manners” column for a class newspaper. Some students could write questions about manners and others could write the answers. Manners can definitely be subjective so it is  important to know that every culture is different. We have to be careful about making judgments about character based on what we perceive as good or bad manners.

Comments

  1. Lilian PerezFebruary 19, 2022 at 5:38 PM

    Hello Amber.
    What a great idea about manner day! You're right when you say we judge people according to their manners and this judgment is in everything, work, friendship... I am so happy to learn about cultures. Great post!

    ReplyDelete

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