All This for a Slice of Pizza?

Yes, I am an English nerd. It's not my fault that language is so interesting! Semantics, dialects, speech acts, scripts—what's not to love? 

In one of my classes we were talking about conversations. There are certain aspects of conversation that we as Americans do a little bit differently than other countries. It is very general (not every American does this), but it does illustrate how people in normal society are taught to interact.

One part of conversation we talked about was when people ask for something. We do silly things like name objects to show that we want something instead of coming right out and asking for it because we don’t want to be rude. For example, if Bob walks into a room and there’s pizza, his stomach grumbles and he says something like, “Oh, pizza.” He hasn’t asked for anything, but he names it in hopes that someone will offer him some. Once someone does offer him some, he initially declines, hoping that the person will offer again. This goes on for a few exchanges until Bob finally says, “Well, if you insist,” and eats the pizza.

 It is not socially acceptable to outright ask people for something that is theirs unless you have a close relationship with them. Being polite is good, but sometimes I think it is hilarious what lengths people are willing to go to in order to be polite. If Bob would have asked for a slice of pizza, he probably would have gotten one (he was just a poor, starving college student after all). However, everyone around him and whoever’s pizza it was would probably think him a bit strange and maybe even a bit rude even though he didn't mean it that way.

Ah, the conventions of conversation!