The non-greeting is observed as essentially rude. It occurs when the greeter completely ignores human compassion or dignity and immediately dives headlong into a request, opinion or exclamation of how busy they are. Even worse when the greeter is requesting something of the greeted such as work, food, favors or affirmation.

I was excited to read “Greet with the same or render a better greeting: Some translational discourse of Persian-Gulf-Arabic greetings” by one Lafi M Alharbi. It seems that the greeting one chooses to open a conversation with, and the subsequent respond by a greeter, can make a big difference to outcomes.

A few choice quotes: “… ‘greetings not only establish an atmosphere of sociability, they also communicate ideas’ (ibid:334)”. My favorite is that “Failure to fulfill one’s obligatory role during greeting exchange may consequently result in a social disappointment, which may vary from dismay to a more serious breach of social relations and perhaps cause to be in a physical danger as in Tuareg greetings in the Sahara desert (Youssouf et al 1976)” (p. 116). About that Tuareg handshake? The cited 1976 source is lovely. Apparently, the Tuareg traveller always runs the risk, in a greeting, that ” …there is always the danger than an unwary traveler can be suddenly pulled from his camel.”

Yeah, we don’t have to deal with that in the office culture. While non-greeting is not particularly deadly, it is certainly considered rude and-in this layperson’s opinion-may result in serious social disappointment.

Alharbi, L. M., & Al-Ajmi, H. (2008). Greet with the same or render a better greeting: Some translational discourse of Persian-Gulf-Arabic greetings. Iranian Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), 2(1), 115-146. Chicago. Retrieved from here

Youssouf, I. A., Grimshaw, A. D., & Bird, C. S. (1976). greetings in the desert. American Ethnologist, 3(4), 797-824. Retrieved from here

A greeting in which the greeter, or the greeted, speak continuously until interrupted by either (a) the other party or (b) external events.

The run-on bears strong similarity to the overly detailed, except that it may be less so — simply is a run-on dialogue that doesn’t end quickly, because the speaker continues to speak long after the greetings probably should have ended, which would have originally resulted in an appropriate greeting, but isn’t appropriate any longer because it hadn’t ended. So there.

The funny thing about run-on sentences and paragraphs is that they differ by culture, for example, native Spanish speakers tend to produce run-on sentences in their English writing due to the native Spanish speaking and writing convention of simply writing long sentences, which makes (a) awareness and (b) proofreading really important cuando estas ecribiendo in otras lenguas. Sabes?

Simpson, J. M. (2000). Topical structure analysis of academic paragraphs in English and Spanish. Journal of Second Language Writing, 9(3), 293-309. Retrieved from aqui