American and British politeness

Lynne Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of English, University of Sussex. Her research concerns what we know when we know words, and stretches to how non-linguistic knowledge and behaviour affect our use of words. Raised and educated in the US, Ms Murphy lived in South Africa in the 1990s and has been in England since 2000. Her observations on the Englishes of these places (and the linguistics behind them) are chronicled in the blog Separated by a Common Language.

In April this year Ms Murphy gave a talk for TED at Sussex University where she dealt with the issue of politeness in US and Britain and how this key aspect of everyday life differs between the two countries.

As it is stated in the first paragraph of this post, Ms Murphy's blog, Separated by a Common Language, delves into the cultural differences of English-speaking countries. If you click on the link above, you can also read her own observations about her TED talk posted here, American and British politeness.

I have been unable to get a transcription of the talk, but if you watch the talk on the YouTube site, you will be able to activate the subtitles on the lower side of the screen. These  YouTube  online subtitles are less accurate than  we would like to, but they may come in handy for English students as a guideline of the main ideas in the talk.