Etiquette partially coincident with manners
Politeness
In the 18th century, during the Age of Enlightenment, the adoption of etiquette was a self-conscious process for acquiring the conventions of politeness and the normative behaviours (charm, manners, demeanour) which symbolically identified the person as a genteel member of the upper class. To identify with the social élite, the upwardly mobile middle class and the bourgeoisie adopted the behaviours and the artistic preferences of the upper class. To that end, socially ambitious people of the middle classes occupied themselves with learning, knowing, and practising the rules of social etiquette, such as the arts of elegant dress and gracious conversation, when to show emotion, and courtesy with and towards women.In the early 18th century, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, wrote influential essays that defined politeness as the art of being pleasing in company; and discussed the function and nature of politeness in the social discourse of a commercial society:Manners
Sociological perspectives
In a society, manners are described as either good manners or as bad manners to indicate to a person whether or not his or her behaviour is acceptable to the cultural group. As such, manners enable ultrasociality and are integral to the functioning of the social norms and conventions that are informally enforced through personal self-regulation in public life and in private life. The perspectives of sociology indicate that manners are a means for people to display their social status, and a means of demarcating, observing, and maintaining the boundaries of social identity and of social class.In The Civilizing Process (1939), the sociologist Norbert Elias said that manners arose as a product of group living, and persist as a way of maintaining social order. That manners proliferated during the Renaissance in response to the development of the ‘absolute state’—the progression from small-group living to large-group living characterised by the centralized power of the State. That the rituals and manners associated with the royal court of England during that period were closely bound to a person's social status. That manners demonstrate a person's position within a social network, and that a person's manners are a means of negotiation from that social position.From the perspective of public health, in The Healthy Citizen (1996), Alana R. Petersen and Deborah Lupton said that manners assisted the diminishment of the social boundaries that existed between the public sphere and the private sphere of a person's life, and so gave rise to “a highly reflective self, a self who monitors his or her behavior with due regard for others with whom he or she interacts, socially”; and that “the public behavior of individuals came to signify their social standing; a means of presenting the self and of evaluating others, and thus the control of the outward self was vital.”Moreover, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu applied the concept of habitus to define the societal functions of manners. The habitus is the set of mental attitudes, personal habits, and skills that a person possesses, his and her dispositions of character that are neither self-determined, nor pre-determined by the external environment, but which are produced and reproduced by social interactions; and are “inculcated through experience and explicit teaching”—yet tend to function at the subconscious level. Therefore, manners are likely to be a central part of the dispositions that guide a person’s ability to decide upon socially-compliant behaviours.Evolutionary perspectives
In studying the expression of emotion by humans and animals, the naturalist Charles Darwin noted the universality of facial expressions of disgust and shame among infants and blind people, and concluded that the emotional responses of shame and disgust are innate behaviours. The public health specialist Valerie Curtis said that the development of facial responses was concomitant with the development of manners, which are behaviours with an evolutionary role in preventing the transmission of diseases, thus, people who practise personal hygiene and politeness will most benefit from membership in their social group, and so stand the best chance of biological survival, by way of opportunities for reproduction.From the study of the evolutionary bases of prejudice, the social psychologists Catherine Cottrell and Steven Neuberg said that human behavioural responses to ‘otherness’ might enable the preservation of manners and social norms. That the feeling of "foreignness"—which people experience in their first social interaction with someone from another culture—might partly serve an evolutionary function: 'Group living surrounds one with individuals [who are] able to physically harm fellow group members, to spread contagious disease, or to "free ride" on their efforts'; therefore, a commitment to sociality is a risk: 'If threats, such as these, are left unchecked, the costs of sociality will quickly exceed its benefits. Thus, to maximize the returns on group "living", individual group members should be attuned to others’ features or behaviors.'Therefore, people who possess the social traits common to the cultural group are to be trusted, and people without the common social traits are to be distrusted as ‘others’, and thus treated with suspicion or excluded from the group. That pressure of social exclusivity, born from the shift towards communal living, excluded uncooperative people and persons with poor personal hygiene. The threat of social exclusion led people to avoid personal behaviours that might embarrass the group or that might provoke revulsion among the group.To demonstrate the transmission of social conformity, the anthropologists Joseph Henrich and Robert Boyd developed a behavioural model indicating that manners are a means of mitigating social differences, curbing undesirable personal behaviours, and fostering co-operation within the social group. That natural selection has favoured the acquisition of genetically-transmitted mechanisms for learning, thereby increasing a person's chances for acquiring locally adaptive behaviours: “Humans possess a reliably developing neural encoding that compels them both to punish individuals who violate group norms (common beliefs or practices) and [to] punish individuals who do not punish norm-violators.”Categories
Social manners are in three categories: (i) manners of hygiene, (ii) manners of courtesy, and (iii) manners of cultural norm, each category accounts for an aspect of the functional role that manners play in a society. The categories of manners are based upon the social outcome of behaviour, rather than upon the personal motivation of the behaviour. As a means of social management, the rules of etiquette encompass most aspects of human social interaction; thus, a rule of etiquette reflects an underlying ethical code, and can reflect a person's fashion and social status.(i) Manners of hygiene concern avoiding the transmission of disease, and usually are taught by the parent to the child by way of parental discipline, positive behavioural enforcement of body-fluid continence (toilet training), and the avoidance of and removal of disease vectors that risk the health of children. To that effect, society expects that, by adulthood, the manners for personal hygiene have become a second-nature behaviour, the violations of which shall provoke physical and moral disgust. Hygiene etiquette during the COVID-19 pandemic has included social distancing and warnings against public spitting.(ii) Manners of courtesy concern self-control and good-faith behaviour, by which a person gives priority to the interests of another person, and priority to the interests of a socio-cultural group, in order to be a trusted member of that group. Courtesy manners maximize the benefits of group-living by regulating the nature of social interactions; however, the performance of courtesy manners occasionally interferes with the avoidance of communicable disease. Generally, parents teach courtesy manners in the same way they teach hygiene manners, but the child also learns manners directly (by observing the behaviour of other people in their social interactions) and by imagined social interactions (through the executive functions of the brain). A child usually learns courtesy manners at an older age than when he or she was toilet trained (taught hygiene manners), because learning the manners of courtesy requires that the child be self-aware and conscious of social position, which then facilitate understanding that violations (accidental or deliberate) of social courtesy will provoke peer disapproval within the social group.
(iii) Manners of cultural norms concern the social rules by which a person establishes his and her identity and membership to a given socio-cultural group. In abiding the manners of cultural norm, a person demarcates socio-cultural identity and establishes social boundaries, which then identify whom to trust and whom to distrust as 'the other', who is not the self. Cultural norm manners are learnt through the enculturation with and the routinisation of ‘the familiar’, and through social exposure to the ‘cultural otherness’ of people identified as foreign to the group. Transgressions and flouting of the manners of cultural norm usually result in the social alienation of the transgressor. The nature of culture-norm manners allows a high level of intra-group variability, but the manners usually are common to the people who identify with the given socio-cultural group.
partially overlapping with partially intersecting with partially sharing with partially matching with partially aligning with