Hello, everyone!!
I'd like to ask you about British politness. It's known that British people are very polite. They always say "please", "sorry or "excuse me" and so on. I think it's very good. It's interesting to learn more examples of politness in British speech. But I need such British word combinations or words that help you to say something not so direct. For example, If a person is stupid, you won't say in a such way. You say "He or she is not bright". So in this case you are politer))))) Give me please more examples and I will be using them for my scientific work)) Thank you in advance...
I agree with Adrian. We seem to be talking about the art of understatement here, rather than please-and-thank you politeness. And yes, it does seem to be a particularly British approach.
But, if I may correct what you said in your post, in fact it isn't polite to say "He is not bright" - that's too direct a statement. Instead, we'd say something along the lines of "He's not too bright" or "He's not especially bright", which is more of a polite understatement.
Other English-speaking nations, particularly Americans and Australians, tend to be much more direct. If fellow italkers will forgive the stereotyping, here's how your example might work. If a student fails dramatically, whereas an American might say something like "Wow! That student sure is dumb!", a British person might say "Oh dear, he isn't the brightest of students, is he?".
Or let's say that someone asked you about your hotel room, which happened to be quite cold. A British person might say "Well, it was none too warm" (a peculiar grammatical construction that only seems to exist for the purpose of understatement - I wouldn't recommend trying to use it!) or they could say "It was rather chilly" or "It was bit on the cool side." Either that, or we'd go to the other extreme, and say "It was bloody freezing!".
I think that what you are referring to is not politeness but the British use of 'irony' to highlight a deficiency, either in yourself or someone else. We use a 'qualified positive' to imply a negative : instead of saying that someone is stupid or 'dumb', or 'a bit dim' we would say '(s)he's not that bright', '(s)he's no genius'.
I remember a teaching colleague saying of a student "She's not the brightest bunny in the field", which I thought rather amusing ['bunny' is a children's word for rabbit].
Someone not good-looking enough to be a TV presenter [in this country] might be described as 'having a good face for radio'.
Courtesies and politeness can be used to disguise unflattering comments, or even unethical behaviour.
Here are a couple of bizarre situations which I think have a grain of truth in them:
"A lorry driver was speared by an 8ft pole and calmly called his boss to say: 'I'm in a spot of bother.' "
...and this fight scene from "Bridget Jones's Diary" - apologising while trashing a restaurant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBvOHpNhswo
@ Jerry:)
or Aussie's version: " No worries"/" No worries, mate".
Australian English less classy than British ( in general) but so friendly which might be even better than just politeness or irony.
