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Culture
文藝版塊
Rules of conduct
行為規范
Manners maketh money
禮儀帶來金錢
Etiquette training is a booming business.
禮儀培訓是一門蓬勃發展的生意。
Acentury ago, Emily Post made manners popular.
一個世紀以前，埃米莉·波斯特讓禮儀變得流行起來。
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”).
她的暢銷書《禮儀》（1922年）將“良好行為的基本原則”描述為時尚而非過時，她提供了實用的建議（“拿不準時，就穿樸素點的衣服”），也給出了夸張的警告（一位“沒有女伴保護的”年輕女士就像“一個手無寸鐵的旅行者獨自在狼群中行走”）。
Readers were gripped.
讀者們被吸引住了。
Post received thousands of letters a week.
波斯特每周收到數千封信。
In 1950 Pageant, a magazine, named her the second-most powerful woman in America.
1950年，《萬象》雜志將她評為美國第二大最具影響力的女性。
(Eleanor Roosevelt—at that point the chair of the UN commission on human rights—topped the list.)
（埃莉諾·羅斯福——當時的聯合國人權委員會主席——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個世紀之后，人們再次對禮儀說道“是的，有勞”。
A host of influencers offer etiquette lessons online, preaching on posture and teaching table manners.
許多網紅在網上教禮儀課，講授姿勢和餐桌禮儀。
#Etiquette posts on TikTok have been viewed more than 5bn times.
TikTok上禮儀相關帖子的瀏覽量已超過50億次。
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·漢森是一位英國禮儀教練，在Instagram和TikTok上擁有約500萬粉絲，也是“英國禮儀學院”的負責人，這是一個“禮儀和禮節研究所”。
Sara Jane Ho, a Chinese instructor, has taken niceties to Netflix.
中國禮儀教師何佩蓉將禮儀課帶到了網飛上。
“Mind Your Manners”, a reality show, was nominated for an Emmy award in 2023.
真人秀節目《國際禮儀指南》在2023年獲得了艾美獎提名。
People are looking for help at the office as well as at home.
除了家庭禮儀，人們也在尋求職場禮儀的指導。
Influencers cover topics such as how to start meetings (promptly) and advise on digital faux pas, including how to leave a group chat (quietly).
網紅們談及的話題包括如何開啟會議（要迅速開啟），以及對網上失禮行為提供建議，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.
根據一項針對老板的調查，超過一半的美國公司正在聘請專家來幫助員工打磨他們的職業形象。
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.
瑞士皮埃爾弗別墅學院自稱是歐洲仍在運營的唯一一所傳統精修學校，它過去常常為初次進入社交界的女子提供禮儀指導。
It now teaches managers how to run a department.
現在它教授管理人員如何管理一個部門。
Old institutions are adapting to 21st-century norms.
老派機構正在適應21世紀的規范。
Courses at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu mix “modern conventions” with “time-honoured traditions”.
皮埃爾弗別墅學院的課程將“現代規范”與“悠久傳統”相結合。
Debrett’s, a guide to Britain’s aristocracy, has updated its “A-Z of Modern Manners” to include behaviours such as “manspreading” and “ghosting”.
德倍禮是英國貴族指南書，其中已經更新了《現代禮儀簡介》，包括“男性岔開腿坐”和“突然與人斷聯”之類的行為。
Other books offer lessons in modern cordiality.
其它書籍提供了現代禮儀課程。
Ms Ho recently published her etiquette teachings.
何女士最近出版了她的禮儀教義。
Mr Hanson’s guide to decorum will be published in September.
漢森先生的禮儀指南也將于9月出版。
This flurry of politesse comes at a time when most people think manners are in decline.
這陣禮儀風潮出現之時，正值大多數人認為禮儀正在式微之際。
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.
根據最近的一項調查，約85%的美國人認為社會不如十年前文明，90%的父母認為6至18歲的年輕人不尊重人。
Most blame social media and peer pressure.
大多數人將其歸咎于社交媒體和同伴壓力。
As well as concerns about impertinence, interest in gentility has surged for two reasons.
除了對無禮的擔憂，對紳士風度的興趣激增還有兩個原因。
The first is covid, which stopped folk interacting face-to-face.
首先是新冠疫情，它阻止了人們面對面的交流。
People started worrying that their social skills were getting as much use as their formal wear.
人們開始擔心他們的社交技能就像他們的正裝一樣，很少被使用。
Mr Hanson says attendance at his in-person sessions increased by 60% after the pandemic.
漢森先生說，疫情之后，他的線下課程出席率增加了60%。
His clients tend to be between 25 and 45 years old, but those who came of age during covid are particularly self-conscious.
他的客戶往往在25歲到45歲之間，但那些在新冠疫情期間成年的人尤其會感覺自己與人交流時不自然。
Big consulting firms such as KPMG have introduced soft-skills training for pandemic-era graduates.
像畢馬威這樣的大型咨詢公司已經為疫情時代的畢業生引入了軟技能培訓。
The second reason is a confusion about what constitutes best practice in a global, digital age.
第二個原因是人們對于在全球化、數字化時代，什么是最佳做法感到困惑。
There are guides online to everything from #emailetiquette to #selfieetiquette, #flyingetiquette to #airbnbetiquette.
網上有各種指南，從電子郵件禮儀到自拍禮儀，從乘飛機禮儀到愛彼迎禮儀。
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.
追隨像何女士這樣的專家（她說她的觀眾“在任何地方、與任何人交流、在任何場合都知道該怎么做”）似乎是避免尷尬的萬無一失的辦法。
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“國際禮儀”“歐洲就餐藝術”等課程的精修學校吸引著那些希望在外國文化中社交或做生意的人。
Like all customs, what is deemed genteel is subject to change.
就像所有的風俗習慣一樣，被認為是優雅的東西也是會變的。
Post knew this, and criticised people who said the young were rude because they followed less formal etiquette.
波斯特知道這一點，并批評了那些因為年輕人遵循不太正式的禮儀而說年輕人粗魯的人。
Louise Mullaney, a sociolinguist, looks at cordial language in “Polite”, a new book.
社會語言學家路易絲·穆蘭尼在新書《禮貌》中研究了令人感到禮貌親切的語言。
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，人們一直將語言的變化視為文明崩潰的標志，但這是“語言進化中自然和不可避免的過程”。
An oft-cited example is the phrase “if it please you”, which was popular in Shakespeare’s day.
一個經常被引用的例子是“如果您愿意的話”這個短語，它在莎士比亞時代很流行。
By the time Post published “Etiquette” it had been shortened to “please”.
到波斯特出版《禮儀》時，這個短語已經被縮短為“請”。
Young people now find it perfectly acceptable to type “pls” on mobile phones.
而現在的年輕人認為，在手機上輸入pls也是完全可以接受的。
Artificial intelligence (AI) will change politeness once more.
人工智能將再次改變禮儀。
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.
咨詢公司麥肯錫估計，在生成式人工智能可以做大量分析工作的時代，軟技能對于企業領導者來說只會變得更加重要。
Good manners may become more appreciated.
禮貌可能會變得更受重視。
At the same time, AI could also make people ruder.
同時，人工智能也可能使人變得更粗魯。
Parents worry that children who bark instructions at virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa are becoming terse.
父母擔心孩子對亞馬遜的Alexa等虛擬助手發號施令會讓他們說話變得更簡短生硬。
Google has tried to remedy this with its “pretty please” feature, which prompts children to say “the magic word”.
谷歌試圖通過其“拜托拜托”功能來解決這個問題，該功能會提示孩子們說“那個神奇的詞”。
A growing field of research suggests polite prompts make AI models perform better.
一個不斷發展的研究領域表明，禮貌的提示詞會使AI模型表現得更好。
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.
中國、日本和英國的研究人員進行的一項新研究發現，粗魯的要求會導致聊天機器人編造內容并遺漏重要信息。
AI mirrors human receptiveness to social etiquette, the researchers think, because it is trained on massive amounts of data created by people.
研究人員認為，AI會鏡映人類對社交禮儀的反應，因為AI是在人類創造的大量數據上進行訓練的。
(Excessive flattery, too, prompts mistakes in chatbots.)
（過度的奉承也會導致聊天機器人犯錯。）
In the digital world, as much as the physical one, it helps to mind your Ps and Qs.
在數字世界中，與在物理世界一樣，注意你的言行舉止都是有幫助的。
