r media. French society is known to be structured along formal lines, with forms of interaction established by longtime custom and practice. Hence the behavioral formality of attention to dressing well and "obligatory handshaking or cheek kissing" in everyday life, as well as the linguistic formality of second-person address, in the shape of the second-person plural vous and accompanying verb form rather than the second-person singular tu and verb form. The expectation in France that formal titles are to be used by those who address (social or economic) superiors or strangers has been formulated as a principle of class honor and stratification,
in which superiors behave as superior beings and subordin ates accept and expect this, conscious of their own lower level in the national hierarchy but also of the honor of their own class. The French do not think in terms of managers versus nonmanagers but in terms of cadres versus non-cadres; one becomes cadre by attending the proper schools and one remains it forever; regardless of their actual task, cadres
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