Manners : Differs with Different Intimacy and Different Social Status Difference - Writing Essay 4

                Manner is a very important part of human life. Manner can be different in diverse cultural settings. In my culture, manner, which is how we treat and interact with someone, signifies two things; the level of intimacy and the social status difference.

                When we are not close to someone, we will behave like an acquintance. We would try to look distant and very polite towards him or her. However, it will be different if we are very close to him or her since we can be more open and mannerless. For example,when I first met one of my friend whom place of origin’s is the same as mine, East Java, I was a bit distant and still speaking Indonesian to him or her since we still do not know each other well. When we started to know that we are from the same region, we started to speak our native tongue, Javanese, even though we were using a polite Javanese. As the time goes, my friend and I became very close and now we are speaking a rude Javanese, with cursing and swearing, which in my culture define that we are very close to someone or a very rude person. Thus we can conclude that the level of manner, which is how we interact with someone, signifies the level of intimacy between people.

                In my culture, someone with lower social status will usually display good manner to someone from higher social status. They will try to look polite and nice since if they do not, they will got a social punishment from the society because they have break normal manners. However, when they are interacting with someone whose social status’ is equal, their behaviour will be different since they can be more open to him or her. They will act different again when they are with someone from lower social status. Some of them will act high and almighty; furthermore, they will like to give orders and will likely to use force to fulfill what they need. However, not all of people whose social status’ is higher behave like a dictator since some of them will act like a protector.  Thus, a person social status, which is higher or lower from another person, could be defined by his or her manner towards the other.

                We now know that, in my culture, the level of intimacy and social status difference could be defined by our manner towards the other. We will act differently when we are with our best friend and when we are with a stranger. We will also act differently when we are interacting with our boss and when we are interacting with our co-workers. However, there is a case where our best friends is our boss or our driver. In the end, we must react with the proper manner in different situation.