 Re: Would you or Could you - politeness
No -doesn't make sense.
Will conveys willingmess - Are you willing to ...
Can conveys possibility - Is it possible for you to ....
Would and could are the second forms of will and can respectively. The second form of the verb conveys remoteness from present reality which may be remoteness in time (ie past), hypotheticality or - and this is what regards us here - psychological remoteness, tentativeness rather than directness. Compare :
I want to ask you something with I wanted to ask you something, I wonder if I can see you for a moment with I [u]wondered[/U if I could see you for a moment or What's your name ? with What was your name? The first is far more direct (and in some circumstances potentially more offensive) than the second. If you think how you might say those phrases you'll probably notice that you can say the first in each pair quite brusquely, but it's much more difficult not to use "polite" intonation with the second - if you did it would probably be a steely tone which implied anger and a "pointed" use of the polite forms.
In the same way as want/wanted etc, Would is less direct than will and could less direct than can. So would/could are more "polite" than will/can.
I think you could argue for ages about whether will/would is more polite than can/could. It depends whether you think enquiring about the possibility of an action is more or less polite than enquiring about someone's willingness to do it. I'd go for willingness, as it allows the person to decide, whereas possibility might be external to the person. So my personal order from most tentative downwards would be would will could can, or maybe would could will can. I'm not sure about the middle two - to me they're round about the same level. But definitely would as most polite and can as least.
See Lewis' The English Verb for a more detailed (coherent??) explanation |