“Modern Manners” and Informalities

Over the past 150 years, modern manners could almost be translated to “modern money” as newly wealthy newcomers were purposely excluded from social groups, until manners could be sufficiently relaxed to allow the newcomers entry into the hierarchy – The kind of politeness that we call “formality”deliberately keeps people apart. Its purpose is partly to prevent prying, and to slow down the process of familiarization in order to give each party time to appraise the other. But apartness creates distinction, so that formality also prevents or defers relationships between two people or two groups who want to be separate, or whose status is hierarchically differentiated. 
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Modern manners increasingly force us to be casual. We have no choice but to comply: the lowering of decorum and the flattening out of what the anthropologist Mary Douglas once called “intricacy” rule us as imperiously as protocol ever did. Politeness, whether formal or informal, has always involved manipulating social distance.

The kind of politeness that we call “formality”deliberately keeps people apart. Its purpose is partly to prevent prying, and to slow down the process of familiarization in order to give each party time to appraise the other. But apartness creates distinction, so that formality also prevents or defers relationships between two people or two groups who want to be separate, or whose status is hierarchically differentiated.

Informal manners, on the other hand, reduce distance; when they consciously impose themselves in opposition to formality, they express scorn for differentiation by status. Where informality reigns, there is less likelihood of either error or criticism. But rules there must be, otherwise there would be no means left of communicating with others or relating to them. — Margaret Visser in “The Rituals of Dinner,” 1991

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia