Grammar Point として

[stevesayskanpai]

Not sure about the grammar in this sentence.

あまり楽しくなかったが、社交辞令として楽しかったと言った。

Why is it 社交辞令として、rather than 社交辞令をして？

[reboundstudent]

I'm still new at this, so please feel free to correct me (seriously, correct me, I need feedback ) but I believe the translation comes out to something like:

あまり楽しくなかったが、社交辞令として楽しかったと言った
It's never that fun, but to be nice, I said it was.

If my translation isn't flawed, として is a kind of phrase/particle meaning "as a..," "in the way of." In this sentence, I kind of read it as "in the way of being...," so "in the way of being diplomatic."

As for it's usage, I think it usually follows nouns as a particle, but dont' quote me. Whatdaya think, guys?

[Psy]

The typical translation of として is simply "as." 社交辞令 is a term which refers to something said to maintain good social relations, e.g. saying "nice hat" instead of "you look dumb." Since I can't think of a single word in English which represents the idea, think of 社交辞令として as a set expression for "to be polite," or perhaps more literally "as a token of keeping social balance."

That's my take.

[Javizy]

You might want to know about としては as well, since it's slightly different. It introduces a standard for comparison, so it's closer to 'for', as in 'for a horror film, this isn't scary at all'. So the guy on the other end of the hollow comments might use this:

楽しかったって社交辞令としては下手くそだったんだな。
For a polite comment, 'it was fun' really sucked.

Not a great explanation, but I mentioned it because this use of は affects a number of expressions like として and に関して as well. When you think about what は does, and translate literally, you can see the original meaning of the expression, but the English translation changes.

I've also heard 外交辞令, which seems to be synonymous with 社交辞令.