“Please,” “Thank You,” and the Working Society

“You want your usual pizza to go with that?” the bartender asked.

“Please,” I replied. And she smiled.

I could have said anything, I realized, and it would have yielded largely the same result. Had I said “yes,” she would have brought my favorite white-cheese pizza with chicken and jalapeño. Or “give it here.” Or “dammit, woman, after all this time you know that when I have a beer, I want the same damn pizza, just bring it already.” Because really, it was a spiritless transaction, my money for her service.

But saying “please” changed the dynamic. Instead of a demand, backed with promises of future money, it became a transaction between relative equals. She still expected to get paid, of course, and I still expected to receive my pizza, and receive it quickly, warm, and not spat-upon. Yet simply saying “please” made the transaction civil and pleasant, and my pizza likely saliva-free.

Back in the 1950s, British philosopher J.L. Austin, in his book How To Do Things With Words, pioneered a concept called “performative utterance.” This means language that, by being spoken, somehow changes reality. Performative utterance doesn’t merely describe something that exists; they aren’t merely true. Austin’s most basic form of performative utterance is saying “I do.”

Saying “please” to a bartender isn’t a performative utterance in the same way as marriage vows, naming a baby, or blessing the Communion elements. But it does have social effects. Which, as I ruminate upon it (with one-and-a-half beers in my system) is very strange. Because the sequence of mouth noises which comprise the word “please” don’t have any objective meaning.

Most languages have a word which serves the same role as “please,” but the phonological similarities range from the approximate, with “por favor” and “s’il vous plait,” to the completely absent, like “onegaishimasu.” Yet they perform the same role, turning neutral requests or hostile demands into civil, even friendly exchanges. Simply saying “please” transforms the tenor of the interaction.

Depending on the culture, though, even that isn’t enough. When I lived in the South, I observed the way people, especially White women, needed to append words like “honey” and “sugar” onto every statement. Without the treacly nicknames, anything they said sounded negative and demanding to their ears. They needed the “sweet nothings” to make even the most innocuous exchange sound polite.

Having not grown up around such expectations, the connection of polite honorifics like “sweetie” onto routine statements sounded invasive to me. In other places I’d lived up to that point, mostly in the Northeast and West Coast, you had to earn terms like “sweetheart,” and you generally applied them to your children, your romantic partner, or your puppy. In the South, though, White women called waiters and grocery baggers “honey-pie.”



The ceremony necessary to make inert words into civil discourse are heavily conditioned by our culture. In Japan, for instance, “onegaishimasu” is generally accompanied by ritually executed bows and other performance, always colored by respective hierarchy. Western rituals are often shrouded in history and myth: does the formal handshake really descend from checking strangers for hidden weapons? It sounds plausible, but I don’t really know.

We also, where appropriate, use language to keep people separate. The practice of military enlisted men addressing officers as “sir” is mirrored, in the private sector, by labor addressing management as “Mister.” And in jobs I’ve had recently, where we’re encouraged to call management by their first names, I’ve witnessed breakdowns in morale when managers have to stop being cordial and start giving orders.

All these things we do to make basic interactions productive don’t objectively exist. We’ve created them through generations of social interaction, and we have to teach them to coming generations. Which, sadly, we haven’t always done: I’ve recently discovered that many people under twenty haven’t learned how to shake hands with boldness and dignity, something I learned in Cub Scouts.

When we don’t pass the skills onto the next generation, we cannot communicate as equals. I don’t want to become some granddad bitching out “kids these days,” but when I shake younger men’s hands, their limp handshakes feel far less than cordial to me. I can only imagine my learned firm grip probably strikes them as aggressive, even hostile and domineering. Because we don’t have the same rituals of civility.

At least, for now, the practice of saying “please” remains valuable. Rituals like this oil the wheels of society and commerce. But I wonder: would I still have gotten my pizza if I’d just said “give it here”?