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Culture
文艺版块
Rules of conduct
行为规范
Manners maketh money
礼仪带来金钱
Etiquette training is a booming business.
礼仪培训是一门蓬勃发展的生意。
Acentury ago, Emily Post made manners popular.
一个世纪以前，埃米莉·波斯特让礼仪变得流行起来。
Her bestselling book, “Etiquette” (1922), framed the “fundamentals of good behaviour” as fashionable rather than fusty; she offered practical advice (“when in doubt, wear the plainer dress”) as well as dramatic warnings (a young lady “unprotected by a chaperone” is like “an unarmed traveller walking alone among wolves”).
她的畅销书《礼仪》（1922年）将“良好行为的基本原则”描述为时尚而非过时，她提供了实用的建议（“拿不准时，就穿朴素点的衣服”），也给出了夸张的警告（一位“没有女伴保护的”年轻女士就像“一个手无寸铁的旅行者独自在狼群中行走”）。
Readers were gripped.
读者们被吸引住了。
Post received thousands of letters a week.
波斯特每周收到数千封信。
In 1950 Pageant, a magazine, named her the second-most powerful woman in America.
1950年，《万象》杂志将她评为美国第二大最具影响力的女性。
(Eleanor Roosevelt—at that point the chair of the UN commission on human rights—topped the list.)
（埃莉诺·罗斯福——当时的联合国人权委员会主席——位列榜首。）
A century after Post’s magnum opus, people are again saying “yes please” to politeness.
在波斯特的代表作推出一个世纪之后，人们再次对礼仪说道“是的，有劳”。
A host of influencers offer etiquette lessons online, preaching on posture and teaching table manners.
许多网红在网上教礼仪课，讲授姿势和餐桌礼仪。
#Etiquette posts on TikTok have been viewed more than 5bn times.
TikTok上礼仪相关帖子的浏览量已超过50亿次。
William Hanson, a British etiquette coach with some 5m fans on Instagram and TikTok, leads The English Manner, an “etiquette and protocol institute”.
威廉·汉森是一位英国礼仪教练，在Instagram和TikTok上拥有约500万粉丝，也是“英国礼仪学院”的负责人，这是一个“礼仪和礼节研究所”。
Sara Jane Ho, a Chinese instructor, has taken niceties to Netflix.
中国礼仪教师何佩蓉将礼仪课带到了网飞上。
“Mind Your Manners”, a reality show, was nominated for an Emmy award in 2023.
真人秀节目《国际礼仪指南》在2023年获得了艾美奖提名。
People are looking for help at the office as well as at home.
除了家庭礼仪，人们也在寻求职场礼仪的指导。
Influencers cover topics such as how to start meetings (promptly) and advise on digital faux pas, including how to leave a group chat (quietly).
网红们谈及的话题包括如何开启会议（要迅速开启），以及对网上失礼行为提供建议，包括如何退出群聊（要悄悄退出）。
More than half of American companies are enlisting experts to help employees hone their professional personas, according to a survey of bosses.
根据一项针对老板的调查，超过一半的美国公司正在聘请专家来帮助员工打磨他们的职业形象。
The Institut Villa Pierrefeu —which claims to be the only traditional finishing school in Europe that is still operating—used to teach debutantes proper deportment.
瑞士皮埃尔弗别墅学院自称是欧洲仍在运营的唯一一所传统精修学校，它过去常常为初次进入社交界的女子提供礼仪指导。
It now teaches managers how to run a department.
现在它教授管理人员如何管理一个部门。
Old institutions are adapting to 21st-century norms.
老派机构正在适应21世纪的规范。
Courses at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu mix “modern conventions” with “time-honoured traditions”.
皮埃尔弗别墅学院的课程将“现代规范”与“悠久传统”相结合。
Debrett’s, a guide to Britain’s aristocracy, has updated its “A-Z of Modern Manners” to include behaviours such as “manspreading” and “ghosting”.
德倍礼是英国贵族指南书，其中已经更新了《现代礼仪简介》，包括“男性岔开腿坐”和“突然与人断联”之类的行为。
Other books offer lessons in modern cordiality.
其它书籍提供了现代礼仪课程。
Ms Ho recently published her etiquette teachings.
何女士最近出版了她的礼仪教义。
Mr Hanson’s guide to decorum will be published in September.
汉森先生的礼仪指南也将于9月出版。
This flurry of politesse comes at a time when most people think manners are in decline.
这阵礼仪风潮出现之时，正值大多数人认为礼仪正在式微之际。
Some 85% of Americans believe society is less civil than it was a decade ago, according to a recent survey; 90% of parents think youngsters aged between six and 18 are disrespectful.
根据最近的一项调查，约85%的美国人认为社会不如十年前文明，90%的父母认为6至18岁的年轻人不尊重人。
Most blame social media and peer pressure.
大多数人将其归咎于社交媒体和同伴压力。
As well as concerns about impertinence, interest in gentility has surged for two reasons.
除了对无礼的担忧，对绅士风度的兴趣激增还有两个原因。
The first is covid, which stopped folk interacting face-to-face.
首先是新冠疫情，它阻止了人们面对面的交流。
People started worrying that their social skills were getting as much use as their formal wear.
人们开始担心他们的社交技能就像他们的正装一样，很少被使用。
Mr Hanson says attendance at his in-person sessions increased by 60% after the pandemic.
汉森先生说，疫情之后，他的线下课程出席率增加了60%。
His clients tend to be between 25 and 45 years old, but those who came of age during covid are particularly self-conscious.
他的客户往往在25岁到45岁之间，但那些在新冠疫情期间成年的人尤其会感觉自己与人交流时不自然。
Big consulting firms such as KPMG have introduced soft-skills training for pandemic-era graduates.
像毕马威这样的大型咨询公司已经为疫情时代的毕业生引入了软技能培训。
The second reason is a confusion about what constitutes best practice in a global, digital age.
第二个原因是人们对于在全球化、数字化时代，什么是最佳做法感到困惑。
There are guides online to everything from #emailetiquette to #selfieetiquette, #flyingetiquette to #airbnbetiquette.
网上有各种指南，从电子邮件礼仪到自拍礼仪，从乘飞机礼仪到爱彼迎礼仪。
Following experts such as Ms Ho, who says her viewers “know what to do anywhere, with anyone, in any situation”, can seem like a sure-fire way to avoid embarrassment.
追随像何女士这样的专家（她说她的观众“在任何地方、与任何人交流、在任何场合都知道该怎么做”）似乎是避免尴尬的万无一失的办法。
Finishing schools, which offer courses such as “international etiquette” and the “European art of dining”, appeal to people who want to socialise or do business in foreign cultures.
提供“国际礼仪”“欧洲就餐艺术”等课程的精修学校吸引着那些希望在外国文化中社交或做生意的人。
Like all customs, what is deemed genteel is subject to change.
就像所有的风俗习惯一样，被认为是优雅的东西也是会变的。
Post knew this, and criticised people who said the young were rude because they followed less formal etiquette.
波斯特知道这一点，并批评了那些因为年轻人遵循不太正式的礼仪而说年轻人粗鲁的人。
Louise Mullaney, a sociolinguist, looks at cordial language in “Polite”, a new book.
社会语言学家路易丝·穆兰尼在新书《礼貌》中研究了令人感到礼貌亲切的语言。
People have long seen linguistic shifts as a sign of crumbling civility, she notes, but they are a “natural and inevitable process of language evolution”.
她指出，人们一直将语言的变化视为文明崩溃的标志，但这是“语言进化中自然和不可避免的过程”。
An oft-cited example is the phrase “if it please you”, which was popular in Shakespeare’s day.
一个经常被引用的例子是“如果您愿意的话”这个短语，它在莎士比亚时代很流行。
By the time Post published “Etiquette” it had been shortened to “please”.
到波斯特出版《礼仪》时，这个短语已经被缩短为“请”。
Young people now find it perfectly acceptable to type “pls” on mobile phones.
而现在的年轻人认为，在手机上输入pls也是完全可以接受的。
Artificial intelligence (AI) will change politeness once more.
人工智能将再次改变礼仪。
McKinsey, a consultancy, reckons soft skills will become only more important for business leaders in an age when generative AI can do much of the analytical heavy lifting.
咨询公司麦肯锡估计，在生成式人工智能可以做大量分析工作的时代，软技能对于企业领导者来说只会变得更加重要。
Good manners may become more appreciated.
礼貌可能会变得更受重视。
At the same time, AI could also make people ruder.
同时，人工智能也可能使人变得更粗鲁。
Parents worry that children who bark instructions at virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa are becoming terse.
父母担心孩子对亚马逊的Alexa等虚拟助手发号施令会让他们说话变得更简短生硬。
Google has tried to remedy this with its “pretty please” feature, which prompts children to say “the magic word”.
谷歌试图通过其“拜托拜托”功能来解决这个问题，该功能会提示孩子们说“那个神奇的词”。
A growing field of research suggests polite prompts make AI models perform better.
一个不断发展的研究领域表明，礼貌的提示词会使AI模型表现得更好。
A new study by researchers in China, Japan and Britain found that rude requests cause chatbots to make things up and omit important bits of information.
中国、日本和英国的研究人员进行的一项新研究发现，粗鲁的要求会导致聊天机器人编造内容并遗漏重要信息。
AI mirrors human receptiveness to social etiquette, the researchers think, because it is trained on massive amounts of data created by people.
研究人员认为，AI会镜映人类对社交礼仪的反应，因为AI是在人类创造的大量数据上进行训练的。
(Excessive flattery, too, prompts mistakes in chatbots.)
（过度的奉承也会导致聊天机器人犯错。）
In the digital world, as much as the physical one, it helps to mind your Ps and Qs.
在数字世界中，与在物理世界一样，注意你的言行举止都是有帮助的。
