AP Lang Essay #3

 2015 AP® ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

Question 3

(Suggested time -40 minutes. This question counts for one-third of the total essay section score.)

An anthropologist studying first-year students at a university in the United States writes that friendly phrases like

"How are you?," "Nice to meet you," and "Let's get in touch" communicate politeness rather than literal intent.

What, if anything, is the value or function of such polite speech?

In a well-written essay, develop your position on the value or function of polite speech in a culture or community which you are familiar. Use appropriate evidence from your reading, experience, or observations to support

your argument.

At first glance, the endless how are you’s and it’s been so long’s seem like meaningless conversational fluff, frills that must be ripped away to get to the real meat of the conversation. However, though it is easy to dismiss these conventions of politeness as frivolous and wasteful when we evaluate them based on their intrinsic meaning, this form of evaluation misses the purpose of these conventions of politeness. These conventions of politeness, though not intrinsically meaningful, open up pathways towards meaningful conversation. They act as touchstones to guide us through our day to day interactions, establishing the foundations of how the interaction will proceed, giving us a sense of the tone, structure, and formality and of the interaction.

A large majority of people feel some anxiety when starting or ending a conversation with an unfamiliar person. Conventions of politeness help ease these transitions. Small talk about someone’s family or the weather, breaks the ice and prepares both parties to engage in conversation about weightier topics.

Furthermore, these initial conventions of politeness lays out the blueprint for how the rest of the interaction will be. Hearing the familiar “how can I help you today” on a customer service hotline sets us up the question-answer pattern for the customer-employee interactions.

Beyond structure, these conventions of politeness also signal tone. In Indian schools, “Good morning students” and “Hey, class” are both acceptable ways for teachers to start a class.However, a greeting of “Hey, class”, indicates to students that the teacher is comfortable with a certain level of informality, whereas “Good morning students” signals to students that the teacher would prefer if students were more formal.Furthermore, these conventions of politeness also underscore the positions of the people talking in the social hierarchy. One would not greet a peer or friend the way on would greet an authority or one’s boss. In Korean, this understanding of social hierarchies is so deeply woven into the fabric of the language that there are 9 ways to greet someone based on their age and social position.

However, conventions of politeness are only valuable within the social contexts we live in. In India, it would be considered socially appropriate to call and older man or woman “Uncle” or “Auntie” in informal contexts, even if the person is not related, or even close to you. In India, this would signal both deference to someone’s age and friendliness. However, in other parts of the world, this may not have the desired effect because since conventions of politeness have no intrinsic meaning, only inferred meaning, conventions of politeness are useless when someone does not have the necessary information to infer what they mean. In this example, a person from another part of the world may not have the same social background and context to understand the significance of being called “auntie” or “uncle”.

Thus, though conventions of politeness have no intrinsic meaning, two people with a shared social context can infer meaning from them. And indeed, these conventions of politeness are only valuable within the shared social context.