By asking questions, the listeners feel that they have a choice to say no and thus are not offended by your request. In Japanese, you should also ask questions when you ask for a favor.
When you ask a question, you give the other person(s) the choice to say "Yes" or "No." This is much more polite than any order using 下さい.
when you ask the same people to do something FOR you, e.g. lend you a book or sign a recommendation letter for you, you can’t just use ください.
This is like a homeless person saying "give me money, sir." It is still an order.
It is as though we were to maintain that I apples are healthy because6 wise people eat them, instead of recognizing that it is the other way about-that it is what the food will do for us which makes us eat it, not the fact that we eat it which makes it good food.
@sophist_monster
"polite literature" and buying a car simply for the snob value as opposed to buying it because it is good
but this edu-cation did not include classical learning, literacy in Greek and Latin, or formal training in rhetoric, except in a few elite schools for boys destined for the univer-sity
I do wonder what the reasoning was for this (I mean, besides the blatant "women and the lower class are too stupid to understand our Great Books and/or will lead lives that do not require a 'polite' education"). We've already read arguments that the "polite" education supposedly improved the virtues as well as the mind, right? Wouldn't all of society benefit if women and the lower class were virtuous, as much as possible?
"Polite"
Here's that word again (see Blair).
Whately picks up the domi-nant trends of the day
Would you like something to read?
Do you have anything light?
Uhh... how 'bout this leaflet polite literature?
Yes, thank you.
ollow the crowd blindly. :I'w-, "'•'" ,_"i"'i.A t¼i
I find this change in car consumerism, in Britain, accurately portrays both the dangers of blindly following the crowd (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE just watch for a few minutes, or until 34:05 (only 5 1/2mins), and why Polite Literature is simply a fad for a lower class to "get ahead," or gain some air or exclusivity.