Holding the door open for others – the darkside?

Back in 2011 Improbable drew attention to the ubiquitous (though at the time somewhat under-investigated) social phenomenon of ‘Door Holding’ see : Etiquette and effort. At the time. a research team from Penn State University, US, proposed that ‘Door Holding’ may have evolved because its perceived effort-saving efficiency might be uplifting for society. (press release […]

Polite Robotic Posturing

Should robots behave politely? Because, to some, it’s a given that in the not-too-distant future large numbers of people will be interacting with robots (domestic, public, corporate and perhaps even law-enforcement/military) on a frequent basis. Professor Tatsuya Nomura at the Department of Media Informatics of Ryukoku University, along with colleagues at the ATR Intelligent Robotics […]

Impoliteness And Rudeness in Lancaster: A coming event

Geoffrey Leech invites you to a celebration of impoliteness and rudeness: Linguistic Impoliteness And Rudeness II (LIAR II) The 2009 International Conference of The Linguistic Politeness Research Group Lancaster University, United Kingdom 30 June – 2 July 2009 This three-day conference focuses is on language and communication that might be described as ‘impolite’, ‘rude’, ‘aggressive’, […]