Greeting Conventions

i thought this was going to be about the greeting card convention that's at the business design centre...which has amused me for the last two days as i've watched coachloads of old people get dropped off.

sorry about potential derailing...

I wish I'd given this a better title, since I don't think it's going to get much response (so there's nothing to derail).

Hello ILE? Greeting conventions? How're you doing?

never present your left hand in the Middle East. Never point to your shoe there, either.

When I lived in the Dominican Republic, just about all women who know each other remotely well kiss each other on the cheek hello. We had a teachers' conference at the school I was teaching at and for every single person who came in late (and there were many), they had to go around to every person in the room and kiss cheeks or shake hands (men would typically shake hands with each other, and kiss the women or shake hands, depending on the relationship).

I was on a couch asleep once and was woken by someone who'd just entered the room and felt they had to say hello to me and kiss my cheek despite my being asleep. That sort of thing took some getting used to for me...

Please comment.

I'm mostly interested in my own American context, where there seems to be an African-American/white divide over this. Although cross-national, cross-regional comparisons are welcome too.

x-post: JuliaA, that's funny. In salsa dancing circles it's pretty common for Latino, and some non-Latino, dancers to greet members of the opposite sex with a kiss on the cheek. I feel affected initiating this, but I have gotten relatively comfortable greeting a woman this way when she is presenting her cheek to me (which should be a fairly obvious gesture to read, but it took me some time). I did mess up once with an Italian salsera who surprised me by presenting one cheek after the other to be kissed (which is maybe Italian rather than Latino?). The bad thing about my not initiating it, but doing it when it's clearly expected is that it could make it look like I am picking and choosing who I want to kiss, which isn't the kiss (and obviously subverts the whole conventionality of the kissing).

I enjoyed the cheek-kissing hellos in the Netherlands when I lived there. They tended to kiss 4 times down south and 3 up north, so sometimes there was an awkward moment of one person going in for another peck when the other one was done.

In the American context, I note an age divide. My little brother's friends greet each other with a lot of hand jive, snapping and slapping.

Sometimes a brief moment of eye contact and a head nod, without any words exchanged, is nice when you pass someone on the street you know.

In what way do you see an African-American/white divide over this?

US regional differences are funny too. I'm used to keeping to myself when in public and not encountering people I know. But when visiting small-town-Midwestern friends, I've noticed that everybody seems to say hello to everybody ever. I was in the middle-of-nowhere, Arkansas and people I didn't know would stop their cars to say a quick hello when I was out for a walk. I'm not used to people I don't know going out of their way to say hi.

xp, the eye contact and head nod seems like a good, unobtrusive way of acknowledging someone you know.

I remember an episode of Pimp My Ride when a white guy, a transplant from a small town to LA, went in to hug the black dude who pimped his ride. The black dude jumped back and was like "whoah, sorry - we don't know each other that well!" I don't know what that says about anything - probably says more about small town vs. big city.

Where I work, the security guards, who are mostly African-American (and it may even be limited to the African-American guards), are constantly saying hello without making any kind of eye contact first, even if they are walking right by you; saying hello to your back; appearing to miss the fact that I am trying to get their attention visually, through eye-contact, so that I can feel comfortable saying hello. I think it leaves them thinking that I am "waiting for them to say hello first," which isn't the case. I once heard a couple African-American employees here complaining about this or that person "waiting to see if you are going to say hello first." I didn't catch whether this person was white or not, but it kind of made me paranoid about the whole thing. (It might not just be the guards but also apply to a lot of the African-American library assistants as well.)

Could be more of a class issue, since they are working a blue-collar job, though like I said, I'm not sure it actually happens with guards who aren't African-American.

Security guards are often treated like they're invisible. Maybe they feel rude making eye contact.

Slightly off-topic, I remember reading somewhere about Mexican kids and troubles at US schools. The Mexican kids had apparently been taught that it was rude to look a teacher straight in the eye, so to show deference and respect, they didn't. Their lack of eye contact came across as "shifty" to the teachers.

"The Mexican kids had apparently been taught that it was rude to look a teacher straight in the eye, so to show deference and respect, they didn't. Their lack of eye contact came across as "shifty" to the teachers"

This happens with polynesian kids as well. As a tutor at university even, I found it hard to explain things to people staring down at their books, not watching my face or hands. And I also suspect that there's a thing where it is impolite to say "no". So if I'd say "did that make sense?" or "are you happy with that?" the answer was always yes. Even if I had been talking virtual gibberish.