Polite Refusal and Disagreement

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Gold Forest English podcast. My name is Jordan and today I'm going to talk. again about politeness.

We've talked about politeness before, but there are many aspects, many parts to politeness. And, as you might know, it's very, very important in English, especially in British English. So, today we're going to talk about politeness, specifically about disagreeing or refusing things in a polite way.

So, as I said, and as you probably know, politeness is very important. We often want to show respect and kindness to the other people because it makes life easier for everybody. The most important thing is to balance our negative point with something positive. So when we are disagreeing with things, we want to be a bit softer and a bit more balanced between our negative no, no, no and the positive. Okay, maybe. Let's look at some different ways to disagree in a polite style. So one of the very common phrases in English is, I see what you mean, but... So this phrase, I see what you mean, but we are acknowledging, we are understanding, we are accepting their opinion, the other person's opinion, the other person's point of view. I see what you mean. It's a sentence which accepts the other person's thought, and then we have our disagreement. We've got the word but. I see what you mean but. So in context, one person might say:

A: I think we should move manufacturing of our product to Vietnam because we could save a lot of money by having the product made in Vietnam.

B: I see what you mean, but I believe that our company has a very strong reputation for high quality Japanese products, and I think that we would lose a lot of our reputation and a lot of our standing if we were to move our production and manufacturing to another country. However, I'm sure that you're right it would save us a lot of money.

So in this situation, the person is accepting and allowing the other person to point to be heard. They're saying, like, I see what you mean. Like, you're right. It would save a lot of money. But. So we have this balance of accepting the other person's thoughts and giving our own thoughts which argue against them. So some other examples of this include things like:

I appreciate your suggestion, but I think we should explore other possibilities.
I appreciate your idea.
I appreciate your input.
I appreciate your thoughts, but I think we should look elsewhere.
I think we should try something different.
I think we should reconsider the plan.

So having this balance between I appreciate and but I think we should do something different. different. These are very, very polite ways to show your disagreement. We are accepting and then also disagreeing. If we talk about how to refuse in a polite way, we have lots of similar styles of sentence, lots of balances between showing appreciation and showing respect for somebody's request or offer, and then refusing it. So, for example, that sounds great, but I am afraid I can't do it. I appreciate the offer, but I have to decline at this time. That's a great idea, but we don't have the budget for it at the moment. We are again balancing between the acceptance, the appreciation of somebody's idea or somebody's offer, and then the refusal. This is very, very important, especially in British English.

In American English, people are often a bit more direct, still polite, but more direct than British English, so an American speaker might say, I don't agree with that, but a British English speaker might say, I see what you mean, but I have a different thought.
An American speaker might say, I think there's a better solution, and a British English person might say, That's a great idea, but I think it could be improved.

So American is a bit more direct, and but British often is a bit softer and indirect. British English definitely prioritizes politeness, but American English often values clarity, directness, being clearly understood. It's very important with American English.

So disagreeing and refusing things is normal part of communication. We do it a lot, but the important thing is how we do it. So be sure to learn a couple of key phrases, a couple of different ways to refuse or disagree with people because they're very useful for our daily life and for business situations. So as always, I've got a full blog post on the website, goldforestacademy.com And in this blog, I go over a lot of different examples of how to refuse, how to disagree with notes about each one. So if you're interested in this topic, definitely check out the blog post.

All right. Well, thank you very much for listening. I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.