Manual keigo (マニュアル敬語?), is a controversial form of honorifics (keigo) in the Japanese language. Employers such as fast-food and convenience-store chains publish training manuals for employees, especially young part-timers who have little experience with honorifics. These manuals incorporate nonstandard formulas for servers and cashiers to use when addressing customers, most often by using alternate expression which are longer and vaguer than the standard expression. Manual keigo is opposed by language purists on the grounds that keigo has fixed, unchangeable grammatical constructions.
Other terms for the same phenomenon include "part-timer's (baito) keigo," "convenience-store keigo," and "family-restaurant keigo."
Famous quotes containing the word manual:
“A great deal of unnecessary worry is indulged in by theatregoers trying to understand what Bernard Shaw means. They are not satisfied to listen to a pleasantly written scene in which three or four clever people say clever things, but they need to purse their lips and scowl a little and debate as to whether Shaw meant the lines to be an attack on monogamy as an institution or a plea for manual training in the public school system.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)