Man[goes] to Speak

The meaning that a friendly phrase carries, whether it is literal intent or politeness, depends on the relations between different parties. It is not necessary that the phrase “How are you?” communicates politeness: maybe a person asked that to his friend, genuinely wondering how his friend is. Maybe you are worried about a teacher that you are not close with because of the Coronavirus outbreak and you need something to be graded quickly, or you need to meet with a tutor or something. I dunno.

Then you might say that between friends, they will say “How r u?” But until about 4ish years ago it wasn’t that popular. I wasn’t using it commonly among closer people until 2-3 years ago. Although abbreviations are getting more common among closer people, meaning that it is more likely than not that their words carry literal intent, many people still use proper formal-ish language, like many parents. And how does one tell the difference between abbreviations and full words while speaking?

As such, I think the human brain is, many times, capable enough to distinguish the meaning of somebody’s words, like how many times we can tell when somebody is being sarcastic. And there are many phrases that can be consider just be used to polite. For example, I use “Hope you are doing well” in the beginning of many of my formal e-mails and messages. Sometimes, I actually mean it and sometimes I don’t. And sometimes I expect people to think of it as literal to start a conversation. As such it is almost impossible to make a list of phrases that only carry politeness and not literal intent and many times that list may be wrong. Even then these phrases could switch between literal intent and just politeness or maybe even be a combination depending on the sender’s mood, the time, the urgency, etc. There are many factors that come into speech and its effect. This is why it is hard to be a great public speaker.
And here’s really bad meme done using photos