背景介绍：
礼仪文化在现代社会再度复兴，追溯其根源，艾米丽·波斯特于1922年出版的《礼仪》一书功不可没。此书不仅定义了良好行为的基本原则，更跨越时代，影响深远。随着社交媒体与全球化的兴起，礼仪面临新挑战，从餐桌到职场，再到数字世界，礼仪规范不断进化。现代礼仪大师如威廉·汉森、何佩嵘等通过新媒体平台传播礼仪知识，应对社会文明下降的忧虑。新冠疫情后，人们对社交技能的重视进一步推升了礼仪学习热潮。同时，人工智能的发展也为礼仪教育带来新机遇与挑战，如何在数字时代保持礼貌与尊重，成为亟待解决的问题。
Finishing
schools for the age of TikTok
完成 TikTok 时代的学业
Unsure how to be polite at work? Ask a digital etiquette guru
不知道如何在工作中保持礼貌?问问数字礼仪专家吧
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·波斯特以其非凡的洞察力，将礼仪推上了时代的风口浪尖。她的不朽之作《礼仪》（1922年）不仅将“良好行为的基本原则”镌刻为永恒的时尚，更赋予了它跨越时代的生命力。书中，波斯特以独到的视角，既提供了诸如“举棋不定时，素装为尚”的实用箴言，也不乏诸如将无监护的年轻女性比作“独行于狼群的无助旅者”之类的深刻警示，字里行间尽显智慧与洞见。
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.)
波斯特的著作如同一股清流，深深吸引了无数读者的心。每周，她都会收到来自四面八方的数千封来信。1950年，权威杂志《选美》更是将她评选为美国第二最具影响力的女性，仅次于时任联合国人权委员会主席的埃莉诺·罗斯福。
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.
时光荏苒，转眼间，波斯特的杰作已跨越了一个世纪的风雨。而今日，礼仪之风再次席卷全球，成为新时代的一种风尚。众多网红纷纷在网络上开设礼仪课程，从站姿到餐桌礼仪，无一不精。TikTok 上，#Etiquette 话题的浏览量已突破惊人的50亿次，足见其受欢迎程度。
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.
英国礼仪大师威廉·汉森，以其专业的指导，在 Instagram 和 TikTok 上坐拥近500万粉丝，成为英国礼仪学院的璀璨明星。而华人讲师何佩嵘则在 Netflix 上开设了礼仪课程，其真人秀节目《注意你的举止》更是荣获2023年艾美奖提名，将礼仪的魅力展现得淋漓尽致。
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).
随着礼仪之风的盛行，人们不再仅仅满足于家庭生活中的礼仪规范，更开始寻求职场礼仪的指导。网红们纷纷涉足职场礼仪领域，从如何高效启动会议到如何优雅退出群聊，无一不涉猎。
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.
一项针对企业老板的调查显示，超过半数的美国公司已聘请专家为员工打造专业形象。而历史悠久的皮埃尔弗学院，虽曾专注于培养初入社交界女性的得体举止，如今也已转型为管理者培训的重要场所。
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.
面对21世纪的挑战，传统礼仪机构纷纷寻求变革以适应新时代的需求。皮埃尔弗学院将“现代惯例”与“悠久传统”巧妙融合于课程中，既保留了礼仪的精髓又注入了时代的新鲜血液。英国贵族指南《德布雷特》也紧跟时代步伐更新了其“现代礼仪A-Z”手册，将“男式摊坐”和“突然消失”等现代行为纳入其中。此外，还有书籍专注于现代友情的培养与维系。何佩嵘最近发表了她的礼仪教学。威廉·汉森的礼仪指南将于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.
然而，这股礼仪复兴之风并非毫无缘由地兴起，事实上，它恰恰反映了人们对社会文明程度下降的深切忧虑。调查显示约85%的美国人认为社会不如十年前文明；而90%的父母则担忧6至18岁的青少年缺乏对他人的尊重。社交媒体和同伴压力被视为这一问题的主要推手。
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.
在忧虑之余，人们对绅士风度的追求也悄然兴起。新冠疫情的爆发成为了这一趋势的催化剂之一。长时间的居家隔离让人们开始担心自己的社交技能是否已经生疏，如同尘封的礼服。
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.
威廉·汉森便见证了这一变化，他的线下课程出勤率在疫情后激增了60%。他的客户往往在25岁到45岁之间，其中不乏那些在疫情中成长起来的年轻人，他们显得尤为不自在。为此大型咨询公司（如毕马威等）也纷纷为毕业生推出了软技能培训课程以帮助他们更好地适应后疫情时代的社会环境。
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.
全球化与数字化的浪潮更是加剧了人们对礼仪规范的困惑。从#电子邮件礼仪到#自拍礼仪，从#飞行礼仪到#爱彼迎礼仪，每一个场景都伴随着不同的礼仪要求。
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.
何佩嵘表示，她的观众“在任何地方、与任何人、在任何情况下都能游刃有余地应对各种社交场合”，向何佩嵘这样的专家学习，似乎是一种避免尴尬的万无一失的方法。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.
正如所有习俗一样，礼仪也在不断地进化与变迁中。艾米丽·波斯特深知这一点，她曾批判过那些将年轻人标签为粗鲁无礼的偏见者。社会语言学家路易丝·穆拉尼在其新书《礼貌》中深入探讨了语言表达中的热情与亲切感。
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.
她指出，语言的变化是文明进步的必然产物而非崩溃的标志，但这是“语言进化的自然和不可避免的过程”。从“如果你愿意的话”到“please”，再到如今的“pls”，每一次变化都见证了人类语言的进化与适应。
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.
展望未来，人工智能（AI）将再次改写礼仪的篇章。在咨询公司麦肯锡看来，在这个生成式AI能够承担大部分分析性工作的时代，软技能对于商业领袖的重要性将日益凸显。礼仪或许会成为区分卓越与平庸的关键所在。
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”.
然而，AI 的普及也带来了潜在的负面影响。家长们担忧孩子们在与虚拟助手（如亚马逊 Alexa）的交互中逐渐变得粗鲁无礼。为了应对这一问题，谷歌推出了“拜托拜托了”功能鼓励孩子们使用礼貌用语。这一举措无疑是对 AI 时代家庭教育的一次有益尝试。
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.
此外，越来越多的研究表明，在数字世界中注意礼仪同样至关重要。一项由中国、日本和英国研究人员联合进行的新研究发现，粗鲁的请求会导致聊天机器人胡编乱造，并遗漏重要信息。
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.
研究人员认为，AI 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，我们也应该注意区分p和q。
重难点词汇：
etiquette [ˈetɪkət] n. 礼仪；礼节；规范
fusty [ˈfəsti] adj. 发霉的；陈腐的；过时的
chaperone [ˈʃæpəˌroʊn] n. 监护人；陪伴人 v. 陪伴；护送
deportment [dɪˈpɔːrtmənt] n. 行为；举止；品行
cordiality [kɔrˈdʒælətɪ] n. 热诚；诚挚
decorum [dɪˈkɔːrəm] n. 礼貌；得体；端庄
impertinence [ɪmˈpɚtnəns] n. 无礼；鲁莽；不恰当
genteel [dʒenˈtiːl] adj. 文雅的；有教养的
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