Transcript of SOS Grammar Lesson 13 – Polite Language

SOS Grammar Lesson 13: Ways to Be Polite. In this lesson, I’m going to discuss some of the ways you can apply grammar rules to be more polite in English.

Being polite and diplomatic will be different for everyone, so it’s not always easy to give a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. If you’re not sure about how to be polite and diplomatic, I encourage you to also have a conversation with a work colleague, mentor, or someone you trust. You can simply do this by asking them “What does it mean to be polite in the specific situation that you want to be polite in?” You can ask them specific questions about etiquette in different situations, meetings or in conversations.

To help you out, in today’s lesson, I’m going to give you some ways an English speaker might use language to be more polite when speaking.

But firstly, where do we need to use diplomatic language or diplomatic and polite language? To tell a client or someone you can’t do something. To make a complaint about something. To make requests or ask questions. To give a command. Making an objection or asking somebody something or disagreeing. Negotiating, or making suggestions.

The first way is to use indirect questions. So a direct question usually starts with a question word. So ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘how’, ‘why’, ‘when’. But an indirect question starts with a phrase. For example, “Can you tell me where the meeting is?”, instead of “Where is the meeting?”. Or, “I was wondering if you could help me?”, instead of “Can you help me?” “Do you know what time we are meeting the client?” “Let me know what you think.”

“I was wondering if you could explain how you did that?” “I was hoping you could help me?” “Could you explain what you mean?” Or, “Do you have any idea how I might improve this?”

The next way you can make your speech more polite is to use ‘softeners’. Softeners are expressions we use at the start of a sentence to make it more polite and less direct.

For example, ‘unfortunately’. ‘To be honest’, ‘actually’, ‘if you don’t mind’. And also, ‘thanks’.

So here are some examples. “Unfortunately, I can’t make it to the meeting.” “To be honest, I don’t agree with you”. “Actually, I’d like to try something else instead.” “If you don’t mind, we need to have a look at this again.” And, “Thanks for your patience.”

Sometimes, showing appreciation is- it goes a long way when you’re trying to be softer in your language. So using ‘thanks’ is a great way of doing that.

The next thing is ‘hedges’. So ‘hedging’ or hedges are where we use a linguistic device or words to express possibility, hesitation or uncertainty, as well as to demonstrate politeness and indirectness. Now, we could do a whole lesson just on the use of hedges in both writing and spoken language. So you often see hedges being used in academic writing, but here are a few examples that you might try and use yourself.

Perhaps. “Perhaps we could try this.” Maybe. “Maybe I didn’t read this properly.” Might. “You might want to try using this template.” Possibly. “One possible reason this happened is because…” Unlikely or likely. “It’s unlikely that I will finish this in time.” To some extent. “I agree to some extent.” And that one’s a good one because it shows that you’re not being so direct with your disagreeing and that you have something else to add. But this is what I know. For example, “I’m not sure if this is clear, but this is what I know.”

Now, the difference between hedges and softeners is that hedges often appear in any part of the sentence, whereas a softener tends to appear at the beginning of a sentence.

Now, something I think is really important is to stop saying ‘sorry’. This is my one example for the day that often you see in many English textbooks where they suggest to start a sentence with ‘sorry’ as a way of softening what you say. Now I think it works sometimes, but I don’t think you need to overuse it. So here are some examples, I’m going to give you an example and something that you could try instead.

So instead of ‘Sorry, I’m late’, try “Thanks for waiting.” Instead of ‘Sorry, I must have missed that’, try “Thanks for pointing that out. I appreciate it.”

Instead of ‘Sorry to bother you’, try “Do you have a minute?” Instead of ‘Sorry, I have a question’, try “I’d like to ask a question.” Or “Could I ask a question?”

The next way we can be polite is to use conditionals for requests. Now these examples could be used in speech, but I also often see them used a lot in written emails. For example “It would be great if you could help me.” “If you could help me, that would be great.” “If you have some time later, could you take a look at this for me?” “How would you feel if we tried this instead?” “Would it be okay with you if I did something different?” So, conditional requests really help to soften your language or soften your question.

We can also use modal verbs. So modal verbs like can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would and must. Now, for example, ‘can’ and ‘could’ are very similar and ‘could’ seems to be more polite, but you would be forgiven for using ‘can’ instead of ‘could’. Sometimes the difference is not that big.

Here are some examples with modal verbs. “Could I get some help with this, please?” “Would it be possible to get some help with this, please?” instead of ‘I need some help with this.’ Or, “I might need more time, if that’s okay.”

We can also use modal verbs in questions. For example, if you really disagree with somebody and you want to offer an opinion, you could say, “I see it differently, could I offer an alternative perspective?” Or, “What could we do to move forward in a positive direction?”

The next thing we can do is to rephrase negative sentences in a positive way. So, for example, this is a negative sentence. “I haven’t finished the plans yet.” Instead, we could make it positive past. “I’m afraid I wasn’t able to finish the plans yet.” By using ‘to be able to’, it highlights your attempt to finish the plans was stopped by circumstances beyond your control.

Use positive downgraders. This is my next one, which happens very often in English. Now be aware that English speakers tend to use positive downgraders to reduce the impact of delivering bad news. Now you don’t necessarily need to use them, too, but be aware that people use them as a way of being polite.

So for example, ‘a little’, ‘a bit’, ‘a little bit’, ‘slight’ or ‘slightly’, ‘small’ or ‘one or two’. For example, “I’m (slightly/a little bit) behind schedule.” Or “We’re a (little/slightly) over budget.”

Next is negative question forms to make suggestions. So rather than being direct and saying, ‘I think we should try this instead’, maybe you could say, “Couldn’t we try this instead?” So we’re using that negative question form. “Couldn’t we try this instead?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better if we tried this instead?”

The next one is to use past continuous. For example, “I was hoping we could finish this by tomorrow.” So, ‘was hoping’ is the past continuous form. “I was thinking it could be better if we did it this way.” “I was wondering if we could…” “I was going to say…” Or, “I was thinking of suggesting…” So this is how we use past continuous, to really soften what our opinion is or what our thoughts might be about something.

The next one is to use the past tense. So, for example, “When did you say our next meeting with the client was?” Instead of ‘When is our next meeting with the client?’ Or, “What did you say about that again?” Again, adding ‘again’ to the end of that sentence also implies that you were listening, but you might have missed it and you need them to repeat it.

Next one asking to repeat. This is my last piece of advice for today. Often, English learners learn how to ask somebody to repeat what they have just said. By, for example, saying, “Could you repeat, please?” Now, sometimes this can come across direct. So I’m going to give you some examples to help you sound more natural. “Do you mind saying that again? I didn’t catch it.” “I didn’t quite catch that. Could you say that again?” Or you can just simply say ‘sorry’, ‘sorry’, ‘sorry’ with a rising inflection at the end.

Now have a go at the quiz to see how much you’ve remembered from today’s lesson.