Central argument: Courteous language has changed a decent amount in the recent past.
In his article “Please Read this Story, Thank You” Linton Weeks claims that courteous language has been modified so much that it has all but disappeared from modern society. In the article he quotes Lisa Gache, co-founder of Beverly hills manners in Los Angeles, who believes that courteous language has just changed due to things becoming more casual in general. This is true, as a lot of things have in fact become a lot more casual, this could be ranging from daily attire to even relations of the intimate nature. Even with this happening a lot of adults may try and put the blame on teenagers, however they should realize that even adults are becoming more casual from day to day.
Regular attire in the 18th and 19th century, in the western world, in most cases used to be 3 piece suits with tail coats for men and a dress for women that used to basically cover up their whole body from the neck down. Now on the other hand weather permitting most men and women, who are not working at the time, can be seen wearing shorts and t-shirts with women exposing as much skin as they possibly dare to. Seeing all this change one can be pretty certain that if people from the current century were to suddenly show up in the 18th century for example, the people there would most probably end up having a heart attack, and this will occur just due to the major change in casual attire.
Sexual relations maybe something that not a lot of people may feel has changed, in fact it could actually also be seen as having become more casual. When looking back at the past couple of centuries one can almost be certain that sexual interactions only took place between people who are in some kind of a relationship, this could be anything from marriage to that of a man and his mistress. Today though sexual encounters, where every member is willing participating, takes place in all sorts of situations; from a date night, where the people have known each other for a number of nights, to a party night, where the people have probably known each other for maybe just about a couple of hours. This definitely shows the current idea of sex being a really casual one, even though at one point it was considered to be very premeditated idea.
Upon realizing the casualness in courteous language a lot of adult would probably straight-out just blame teenagers for it, they do however should realize that they are doing the exact same thing. In the real world, outside what shows up on research papers and things, the adults need to face the truth, it being that other than the teenagers they themselves are also starting to use the modified versions of courteous language such as “no problem” instead of “welcome” or “I am good” instead of “no thank you.” Also a lot of times it is actually these behaviors by adults that teenagers pick up and think of as courteous language itself rather than a more casual version of it.
After seeing all these things that have changed in the recent past it should be no surprise to anyone that courteous language has also changed with it. This change could be described as part of a natural procedure of change that takes place in everything, other than that you may choose to believe that either courteous language has disappeared altogether or has just been tweaked.
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