What is the Purpose of Ingenuine Questions and Repsonses?

The purpose of polite communication is not for the purpose of desiring a genuine answer, it is used simply because the phrases are ingrained into daily communication.

From a young age, we are taught polite phrases and responses that a “normal” conversation should contain. These are all classified as common, daily, or conversational phrases. When meeting someone for the first time, it is almost an innate reaction to “break the ice” with these “preloaded” phrases and questions. The purpose of learning these in the first place are for the purpose of learning basic communication skills, and just stick with us for life it seems. 

Personally, when I am talking to someone, the first natural response that comes to mind is to ask them “How are you?”. The most common answers are either “I’m doing well” or “I’m fine”. There is no chance that everyone is fine or doing well! The societal purpose of asking that question isn’t to receive a genuine answer or to show concern about how the other person is feeling; it is just the natural and polite conversation opener that has been ingrained in everyone’s minds as the correct thing to say. It is extremely common in society to not need to hesitate when asked these basic questions, as they trigger already prepared responses.

A very similar process is involved in regard to the phrase “nice to meet you”. Not everyone thinks that they are glad they met whomever they were saying that phrase to, it is simply an ending to a conversation that is, similarly to “how are you”, fixed into our minds at a young age as the correct way to end a conversation. It is not socially acceptable to say “it was terrible meeting you”, as it is very rude. What is socially acceptable and polite to say is “nice to meet you”, hence the reason it is taught to us at our earliest memories as what should be said. 

Even though many do not remember the first phrases they were taught, this process of teaching basic and polite conversational phrases is prevalent when learning a new language. When I took Spanish 1, the first things we were taught were these phrases. We were taught how to say, “hello”, “how are you”, “nice meeting you”, and the also polite and sometimes ingenuine corresponding responses.  

Ergo, the only reason we use these polite and ingenious conversational phrases are simply because they were what were deemed as the socially correct answers to say.