Saturday, December 10, 2005
Just an aside... Some of my friends in Davis take this course called Linguistic 25... i have no idea what the course title is really, but we always talk about Linguistic 25 and Linguistic 96. The goal of both classes is to improve student's English and they are taken predominantly by Exchange students.SO anyway. Junko after emerging from one of its discussion classes had a revelation.
"Do you know, my instructor told us that when Americans say 'We really should go out sometime! or We should do this more often' they are simply being polite and they don't actually mean what they say?"
and this was met with disdain and 'shock' by all of us. I guess it's not really an issue of sincereity but the use of positive politeness- which Americans ALWAYS use.
Might just have been applied in your case=)
My comp has a trojan and it's frustrating the hell out of me. My com is slowing down rapidly. ARGH.