Quelqu'un a écrit que une personne malpolie est une personne qui "ne respecte pas l'opinion des autres". Cela me provoque a poser la contre-question: qu'est-ce que ça veut dire de respecter l'opinion de quelqu'un? Est-ce qu’on a pas le droit de questionner des opinions des autres? Est-ce qu'il y des genres des opinions qu'on peut questionner (politiques?), mais des autres qu'on ne peut pas (religieux?) et pour quoi?

Je pense personnellement que le seul but des opinions est d'être questionné, car une opinion est quelque chose qui par définition n'est pas la vérité, et donc que pour trouver la vérité on doit pousser plus loin le raisonnement, quitte à changer d'opinion.

Après, je ne sais pas si on peut placer la foi religieuse sur le plan de l'opinion : quelqu'un qui a vraiment une ferveur croyante ne s'arrêtera pas de croire parce qu'on lui prouve qu'il peut croire en quelque chose de mieux, c'est un peu comme préferer les tartes aux fraises aux tartes au chocolat.

Pour moi, on peut questionner une opinion tout en la respectant. Ce sont deux choses différentes. Respecter une opinion, je dirai que ça veut dire accepter que quelqu'un puisse avoir cette opinion, et ne pas juger de cette personne ou de son intelligence sur la base de cette seule opinion. 

En gros, je peux penser que tu as tort, ne pas être d'accord avec toi, mais qu'on reste quand même super potes et tout.

@Arvid

It is somewhat common to hear people complaining of others not "respecting their opinions". This statement does not mean that you can't question their opinion rather, you will not try to claim that their opinion is wrong. An opinion by definition is not fact, therefore, it cannot be right or wrong. To disrespect someone's opionion would be to claim that your's is right and their's is wrong. It is okay to ask why someone has the opinion that they do and to question their reasoning. In fact, many great debates start in this way everyday. 

I found it interesting that many of the French students mentioned not adhearing to local traditions/customs as rude. I would tend to think that in France it is less acceptable to do something inpolite than it would be here in America. Here we would see the person as ignorant and ignore them, but probably wouldn't consider them to be rude. As long as they are not consiously being impolite, they are often forgiven. 

I find it interesting that in France, a rude person seems to be someone who doesn't follow much of the norm, such as knowing about politics, having bad manners, or saying impolite words, while in the US, a person is considered rude at a more personal level. For example, talking behind your back, etc.

I found it entertaining how some of us seemed to have a specific rude person in mind while answering this, and others just made generalizations (I would guess "wouldn't give seat to an elderly person on the subway" was a rude event actually witnessed by that person, while "is inconsiderate" is pretty vague). 

@Jean-Michael 

some opinions don't have "right" or "wrong". I absolutely agree that questioning an opinion can be respectful and that you should be open to change your opinions. That applies to trivial manners, such as the best way to clean a toilet, but I think it also applies to stuff like religion and the role of government, that aren't necessarily right or wrong.

There are even cultural topics like acceptable female business attire, alcohol, smoking, slavery, and taxes that history has seen change over time. While some of these do have right or wrong answers (slavery), others (alcohol) are grossly different in different cultures, from legal at all ages to forbidden at all ages. Who's to say one culture does it "wrong", and why should that change your opinion on it?

Whoops, actually, that's totally off-topic, we're talking about rudeness. Anyway, they are opinions that people can differ on respectfully and that your opinion can change on, but not necessarily because it's a "right" answer.

I agree with what Patricia says; in France a rude person is someone who behaves outside the norm of what is socially acceptable. This might be asking questions or talking about a taboo topic or saying impolite words in certain contexts. So, in France, a rude person is someone who has "bad manners". In this sense, the culture in France is much more similar than the culture in South America, where I'm from. When I came to the United States it shocked me how a lot of people openly talk about money and ask you, for example, if you are rich or not, and this is entirely normal. For me, and I think that in France as well, this is extremely rude and impolite

Going off what Mariana said, I wouldn't necessarily say that asking about money and being rich isn't also extremely impolite in America - Americans just seem to have less of a problem with behaving impolitely in some contexts. I think that to some degree this aligns with other word association and sentence completion activity responses, where it was clear that Americans think on a much more individual level while the French seem to think of themselves more as a coherent society. I think this probably has a lot to do with the diversity, geographic size and relatively short history of the United States -- there's not a lot of common identity, and so people identify strongly as individuals or small communities. France, with its richer history and smaller size, sees itself more as a single society, hence breaking cultural norms is considered extremely rude. This is just a hypothesis, of cours.e

Going off what Mariana said, I wouldn't necessarily say that asking about money and being rich isn't also extremely impolite in America - Americans just seem to have less of a problem with behaving impolitely in some contexts. I think that to some degree this aligns with other word association and sentence completion activity responses, where it was clear that Americans think on a much more individual level while the French seem to think of themselves more as a coherent society. I think this probably has a lot to do with the diversity, geographic size and relatively short history of the United States -- there's not a lot of common identity, and so people identify strongly as individuals or small communities. France, with its richer history and smaller size, sees itself more as a single society, hence breaking cultural norms is considered extremely rude. This is just a hypothesis, of course.

Je suis du même avis que Mariana, pour moi "impoli" va très bien avec "grossier" et "qui a de mauvaises manières". Et certaines des réponses du côté U.S. sont en accord avec cette association. Par contre j'aimerais savoir si vous percevez comme moi que "rude" peut aussi correspondre à une image d'égoïsme, voire de narcissisme (je cite par exemple "disrespects others opinions/the boundaries or sensibilities of others", "has no regard for others") ? Parce que j'avoue que j'étais à des années lumière de voir ce sens associé à ce mot.

Pour rebondir sur ce que dit Margaret, je ne pense pas qu'être impoli(e) soit moins acceptable en France qu'aux Etats-Unis. Si une personne l'est, elle n'est pas mise au ban de la société. Il est souvent d'usage de lui faire remarquer mais il est aussi facile de lui pardonner !

Et une petite question, le cliché selon lequel les français sont vus comme impolis (surtout les touristes) évoque-t-il quelque chose pour vous ?

@ Matirina

I agree that being rude isn't acceptable in either culture. However, from the sentence responses it seems that what is classified as rude is slightly different. I just think that someone who is unknowingly being impolite would be classified as ignorant more often than rude here, which does not seem to be the same in France. 

@Patricia, I totally agree with what you said. i also see that. It seems that Americans are more sensitive at a personal level whereas the French believe that it is rude to disrespect the community. I think it's not that we americans do not care about our community, it's just we don't judge as much as when something's actually done to us. This topic sort of reminds me of the "I can't stand it when people..." because in some sense, it was answered in a similar way as this one..The french could not stand it when people vandalized something public or were violent.

@Lilian

C'est vrai, je pense qu'on associe beaucoup le fait d'être impoli avec le fait de manquer de respects aux autres et envers la communauté.

Pour revenir sur "someone who is unknowingly being impolite would be classified as ignorant more often than rude", je pense qu'on peut faire la différence entre deux catégories. L'ignorance "sincère" est une chose, le fait de ne même pas essayer de se renseigner en est une autre.