In Guess cultures, how much estimation of other people’s desires goes on, and how much is following rules about how desires can be expressed? This may vary from one culture to another, and it may be very hard to get an answer to the question.
Do Guess cultures tend to have etiquette creep, where, if going through a ritual is equivalent to making a request (demand), then the ritual must be made more ambiguous?
Does the Euphemism Treadmill fit your idea of etiquette creep? It refers to the process of euphemisms gradually coming to be perceived as no less rude than the expressions they originally replaced, leading to the adoption of shiny new euphemisms to replace them.
It’s plausible that etiquette creep is the mechanism by which such cultures became Guess cultures in the first place. The other mechanism I can think of is etiquette arms race: basically, mastery of etiquette is how you signal your social acuity, and if it comes to pass that everyone in your culture knows the rules it becomes neccesary to make them even more complicated so that the signal doesn’t lose it’s value.
In Guess cultures, how much estimation of other people’s desires goes on, and how much is following rules about how desires can be expressed? This may vary from one culture to another, and it may be very hard to get an answer to the question.
Do Guess cultures tend to have etiquette creep, where, if going through a ritual is equivalent to making a request (demand), then the ritual must be made more ambiguous?
Does the Euphemism Treadmill fit your idea of etiquette creep? It refers to the process of euphemisms gradually coming to be perceived as no less rude than the expressions they originally replaced, leading to the adoption of shiny new euphemisms to replace them.
It’s plausible that etiquette creep is the mechanism by which such cultures became Guess cultures in the first place. The other mechanism I can think of is etiquette arms race: basically, mastery of etiquette is how you signal your social acuity, and if it comes to pass that everyone in your culture knows the rules it becomes neccesary to make them even more complicated so that the signal doesn’t lose it’s value.