Abstract
This is a hybrid book. Its academic side is that it rests on the results of much research, interwoven with micro-insights from Lane; its more popular side is that it contains numerous examples, an engaging style, but no in-text citations or bibliography (instead, studies are cited in numerous endnotes). Note the way these examples are deployed: they are anecdotes that set the scene, typically at the beginning of a section or chapter, and help engage the reader, rather than examples for analysis.
Lane hopes that the book ‘will increase your understanding of both the benefits and costs associated with civil behavior and enable you to find your own way to promote civility’ (p. xi). Understanding incivility is the primary goal of the book; the secondary goal is to do something about it. The latter is particularly salient in end-of-chapter recommendations about what to do or not do (e.g. ‘use good manners’, ‘think about others’ potential reactions before making an utterance’, ‘adapt your communication to your “audience”’), and also in the final chapter. Perhaps, some academics would pooh-pooh this as a prescriptive enterprise, but it is undeniably a worthy endeavour and seems to be sensible advice.
What is meant by ‘incivility’, or indeed ‘civility’? The first thing to note is the choice of word itself – not one which will ring many bells with linguists. The near-synonym ‘impoliteness’ would fare better, as would most certainly its antonym, ‘politeness’. Judging from this book’s underpinning research work, and the cited newspaper and magazine articles, policy documents and so on, ‘civility’ is the term of choice in North America. As elaborated in Chapter 2, civility is understood to be behaviour that demonstrates respect, restraint and responsibility. Interestingly, the focus of the book is on the communication of incivility, ‘the subjective interpretations of the meaning of messages’ (p. 11). It sounds as if pragmatics should lie at its heart. Actually, relatively little research with clear pragmatics credentials is cited, and the same might be said of research in interactional sociolinguistics, or even linguistics. Instead, the focus is more on the context involved in the communication of incivility. Adduced research comes from a wide range of disciplines – (social) psychology, sociology, anthropology, politics, business studies and so on – disciplines that feed into (human) communication studies. This is not to deny that there is some discussion of pragmatic and/or linguistic topics. For example, there are sections on intention, verbal intensity, communication style, (non)-verbal communication, gestures, vocal qualities, indirectness, interruptions and meta-communication. Nevertheless, the underpinning linguistics research is not broad. For example, almost all works cited for interruptions are written by Deborah Tannen.
The four chapters following the introduction are designed to help define incivility. Chapter 2, characterising incivility, includes a large table summarising existing ‘definitions and categories of civility’ (p. 32). Aside from columns on respect, restraint and responsibility, there is a column on ‘manners/politeness’. Strikingly, there is no mention of any work from the academic domain of politeness studies, not even the hugely cited Brown and Levinson (1987). In fact, these works are lacking from the book generally, as is work on impoliteness. Chapter 3 focuses on the influences on incivility, especially cultural influences. The opening pages, containing broad generalisations about ‘national cultures’, are worrying. Even more so is the fact that the opening anecdote, used to trigger generalisations about British culture, revolves around an event in Oxford – hardly representative of British culture generally. Fortunately, later it is noted that ‘culture is not a “strictly national phenomenon”’ (p. 54), and that we ‘should always remember that generalizations based on nationality may cause us to stereotype and disregard individual differences’ (p. 55). Chapter 4, a short chapter, focuses on incivility outcomes. There is a timely reminder that incivility can result in benefits, such as escaping from an emergency situation or promoting long-time benefits. Chapter 5 concentrates on power and incivility. This would have been the perfect place to discuss Bousfield and Locher (2008), a collection of papers on impoliteness and power, but it is absent. This chapter includes some sensible observations on perceptions of indirectness and power, but no mention of the many works in politeness studies that propose an interaction between indirectness and power and/or carry out empirical investigations.
The second half of the book comprises three chapters, each focusing on incivility in a particular context. Chapter 6 examines incivility in the workplace, examining the nature, causes and consequences of incivility, as well as the steps which can be taken to manage it. The usual mix of illustrations, results from research and observations from Lane follows, all making for a pleasant read. However, the lack of mention of Janet Holmes and colleagues’ Language in the Workplace Project, and the multiple publications it has produced, seems like a glaring omission. The other chapters are similar. Chapter 7 looks at incivility online, covering types of incivility (flaming, trolling, etc.), consequences and motivations, and also cell/mobile phone use. There is very little on language in this chapter. Chapter 8 examines incivility at home. This chapter does more to examine types of verbal behaviour, specifically between married couples, parents and children, and siblings.
One’s evaluation of this book is likely to depend on the kind of reader you are, or at least how you are reading it. Although there are occasional excursions outside the cultures of the United States, the book is tailored for the US readers. The book does an excellent job of accommodating the non-academic reader. The examples inject vivid liveliness, the writing is a model of clarity and there is an impressive synthesis of a large body of research. The downside of this accommodation, however, is that this book has little to say about theory or method, and generalises at the expense of subtlety. Moreover, the body of research covered is that of (human) communication research, a field that is dominant in the United States. The almost complete neglect of work on politeness, and more particularly impoliteness, is a shame. Of course, one might argue that much work on (im)politeness neglects that of human communication research, though perhaps not to the same extent. Nevertheless, this is where the book might have interest for the linguist: we can rapidly find out how human communication research has tackled the notion of incivility and be furnished with a contextually richer vision of our work on the language of incivility/impoliteness.