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概要：印象中，数字时代的礼仪似乎越来越不重要，但是最近国外版抖音TikTok上却风行礼仪课程。本文分析了数字时代礼仪的重要意义，以及礼仪随时代变迁的里程。甚至人工智能也喜欢更礼貌的提问者。（文中带粗体的生词请在文末点击左下角阅读原文查看）
Finishing schools for the age of TikTok
Unsure how to be polite at work? Ask a digital etiquette guru
July 2nd 2024
A CENTURY AGO, Emily Post made manners popular. Her bestselling book, “Etiquette” (1922), framed the “fundamentals of good behaviour” as fashionable rather than fusty; she offered practical advice (“when in doubt, wear the plainer dress”) as well as dramatic warnings (a young lady “unprotected by a chaperone” is like “an unarmed traveller walking alone among wolves”).
一个世纪前，艾米丽·波斯特让礼仪流行起来。她的畅销书《礼仪》(1922)将“良好行为的基本原则”定义为时尚而非过时的；她提出了切实可行的建议(“当有疑问时，就选择穿朴素的衣服”)，也提出了引人注目的警告(“没有监护人保护”的年轻女士就像“手无寸铁的旅行者独自行走在狼群中”)。
Readers were gripped. Post received thousands of letters a week. In 1950 Pageant, a magazine, named her the second-most powerful woman in America. (Eleanor Roosevelt—at that point the chair of the UN commission on human rights—topped the list.)
读者们被她的书迷住了。波斯特每周收到数千封信。1950年，Pageant 杂志将她评为美国第二大最有影响力的女性。(名列榜首的是埃莉诺·罗斯福——时任联合国人权委员会主席。)
A century after Post’s magnum opus, people are again saying “yes please” to politeness. A host of influencers offer etiquette lessons online, preaching on posture and teaching table manners. #Etiquette posts on TikTok have been viewed more than 5bn times. William Hanson, a British etiquette coach with some 5m fans on Instagram and TikTok, leads The English Manner, an “etiquette and protocol institute”. Sara Jane Ho, a Chinese instructor, has taken niceties to Netflix. “Mind Your Manners”, a reality show, was nominated for an Emmy award in 2023.
在波斯特的巨著问世一个世纪之后，人们再次礼貌地说，“是的，请”。许多有影响力的人在网上提供礼仪课程，宣传姿态，教授餐桌礼仪。TikTok上的#礼仪 帖子已经被浏览了超过50亿次。英国礼仪教练威廉·汉森(William Hanson)在Instagram和TikTok上拥有约500万粉丝，他是“礼仪学院”The English Manner的负责人。中文教师Sara Jane Ho将礼仪带到了Netflix上。真人秀节目《注意举止》(Mind Your Manners)曾在2023年获得艾美奖提名。
People are looking for help at the office as well as at home. Influencers cover topics such as how to start meetings (promptly) and advise on digital faux pas, including how to leave a group chat (quietly). More than half of American companies are enlisting experts to help employees hone their professional personas, according to a survey of bosses. The Institut Villa Pierrefeu—which claims to be the only traditional finishing school in Europe that is still operating—used to teach debutantes proper deportment. It now teaches managers how to run a department.
人们在办公室和家里都在寻求礼仪上的帮助。网红们会谈及的话题包括如何(迅速)召开会议，以及如何(悄悄地)离开群聊等关于w网络失礼行为的建议。一项针对老板的调查显示，超过一半的美国公司正在聘请专家帮助员工塑造职业形象。皮埃尔弗别墅学院(The Institut Villa Pierrefeu)——号称是欧洲唯一一所仍在运营的传统精修学校——曾经教授初入社会的少女正确的仪态，现在则在教经理们如何管理自己的部门。
Old institutions are adapting to 21st-century norms. Courses at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu mix “modern conventions” with “time-honoured traditions”. Debrett’s, a guide to Britain’s aristocracy, has updated its “A-Z of Modern Manners” to include behaviours such as “manspreading” and “ghosting”. Other books offer lessons in modern cordiality. Ms Ho recently published her etiquette teachings. Mr Hanson’s guide to decorum will be published in September.
旧的机构正在适应21世纪的规范。皮埃尔弗别墅学院的课程将“现代惯例”与“悠久的历史传统”相结合。英国贵族指南《德布雷特》(Debrett’s)更新了其“现代礼仪A - Z”手册，将“男式摊坐”和“失联”等行为纳入其中。有的书则提供了现代礼仪方面的课程。Ho小姐最近发表了她的礼仪教学。汉森先生的礼仪指南将于9月出版。
This flurry of politesse comes at a time when most people think manners are in decline. Some 85% of Americans believe society is less civil than it was a decade ago, according to a recent survey; 90% of parents think youngsters aged between six and 18 are disrespectful. Most blame social media and peer pressure.
在大多数人认为礼仪正在衰落之际，这股崇尚礼仪之风应运而生。根据最近的一项调查，大约85%的美国人认为社会不如十年前文明；90%的父母认为6到18岁的孩子是不礼貌的。大多数人将其归咎于社交媒体和同伴压力。
As well as concerns about impertinence, interest in gentility has surged for two reasons. The first is covid, which stopped folk interacting face-to-face. People started worrying that their social skills were getting as much use as their formal wear. Mr Hanson says attendance at his in-person sessions increased by 60% after the pandemic. His clients tend to be between 25 and 45 years old, but those who came of age during covid are particularly self-conscious. Big consulting firms such as KPMG have introduced soft-skills training for pandemic-era graduates.
除了对无礼行为的担忧外，人们对绅士风度的兴趣激增有两个原因。首先是疫情阻止了人们面对面的交流。人们开始担心自己的社交技巧会像他们的正装一样很少用到。汉森表示，疫情爆发后，参加他亲自授课的人数增加了60%。他的客户往往在25岁到45岁之间，但在疫情期间成年的人群自我意识要尤其强。毕马威(KPMG)等大型咨询公司为疫情时期的毕业生提供了软技能培训。
The second reason is a confusion about what constitutes best practice in a global, digital age. There are guides online to everything from #emailetiquette to #selfieetiquette, #flyingetiquette to #airbnbetiquette. Following experts such as Ms Ho, who says her viewers “know what to do anywhere, with anyone, in any situation”, can seem like a sure-fire way to avoid embarrassment. Finishing schools, which offer courses such as “international etiquette” and the “European art of dining”, appeal to people who want to socialise or do business in foreign cultures.
第二个原因是，在全球化的数字时代，人们对什么是最佳实践感到困惑。网上有各种各样的指南，从#电子邮件礼仪#到#自拍礼仪#，从#飞行礼仪#到#airbnb礼仪#。Ho小姐表示，她的观众“在任何地方、与任何人、在任何情况下都知道该如何表现得体”。效仿何小姐这样的专家，似乎是避免尴尬万无一失的方法。提供“国际礼仪”和“欧洲餐饮艺术”等课程的精修学校，对那些想在外国文化中社交或做生意的人很有吸引力。
Like all customs, what is deemed genteel is subject to change. Post knew this, and criticised people who said the young were rude because they followed less formal etiquette. Louise Mullaney, a sociolinguist, looks at cordial language in “Polite”, a new book. People have long seen linguistic shifts as a sign of crumbling civility, she notes, but they are a “natural and inevitable process of language evolution”. An oft-cited example is the phrase “if it please you”, which was popular in Shakespeare’s day. By the time Post published “Etiquette” it had been shortened to “please”. Young people now find it perfectly acceptable to type “pls” on mobile phones.
就像所有的习俗一样，所谓的绅士行为是可以改变的。波斯特知道这一点，她批评了那些说年轻人不遵守正式礼仪而显得粗鲁的人。社会语言学家Louise Mullaney在新书《礼仪》中研究了关于亲切的语言。她指出，长期以来，人们一直将语言的转变视为文明崩溃的标志，但这是“语言进化自然而不可避免的过程”。一个经常被引用的例子是，在莎士比亚时代很流行的短语“if it please you”。到华盛顿邮报出版《礼仪》时，这个短语已被缩短为“please”。年轻人现在发现，在手机上输入“pls”是完全可以接受的。
Artificial intelligence (AI) will change politeness once more. McKinsey, a consultancy, reckons soft skills will become only more important for business leaders in an age when generative AI can do much of the analytical heavy lifting. Good manners may become more appreciated.
人工智能(AI)将再次改变礼仪。咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey)认为，在一个生成式人工智能可以承担大量繁重分析工作的时代，软技能对商业领袖只会变得更加重要。良好的礼仪可能会变得更受欢迎。
At the same time, AI could also make people ruder. Parents worry that children who bark instructions at virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa are becoming terse. Google has tried to remedy this with its “pretty please” feature, which prompts children to say “the magic word”.
与此同时，人工智能也会让人们变得更粗鲁。家长们担心，孩子们对亚马逊(Amazon)的Alexa等虚拟助手发出指令时，会变得越来越不礼貌。谷歌试图通过“pretty please”的功能来解决这个问题，这个功能会提示孩子们说出“神奇的词please”。
A growing field of research suggests polite prompts make AI models perform better. A new study by researchers in China, Japan and Britain found that rude requests cause chatbots to make things up and omit important bits of information. AI mirrors human receptiveness to social etiquette, the researchers think, because it is trained on massive amounts of data created by people. (Excessive flattery, too, prompts mistakes in chatbots.) In the digital world, as much as the physical one, it helps to mind your Ps and Qs. ■
越来越多的研究领域表明，礼仪的提示能让人工智能模型表现得更好。中国、日本和英国的研究人员进行的一项新研究发现，粗鲁的请求会导致聊天机器人胡编乱造，并遗漏重要信息。研究人员认为，人工智能反映了人类对社交礼仪的接受能力，因为它是在人类创造的大量数据上进行训练的。(过度的奉承也会导致聊天机器人出错。)在数字世界里，就像在现实世界里一样，注意言行对自己是有帮助的。■
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