In a previous post, I said this: “For some, there are rules about rhetorical practices. There is, for instance, the “niceness” crowd. These are people who believe that policy discourse specifically, and public discourse generally, should avoid vehemence of any sort, even including vehement criticism. It’s very much about tone—there should be no “name-calling,” “personal attacks” (they generally have a very broad and misguided understanding of ad hominem), “offensive” language. They sincerely believe that we can and should get through every conflict without hurting someone’s feelings, or making them feel bad. Their assessment of the “civility” of the discourse is largely affective—how they feel in response to something that is said.”
And I was asked about it, especially the last part, so I’ll try to explain it better.
We have a tendency to assess the tone of a piece by our own affective response. So, if we feel attacked by something we read, heard, or saw, we characterize the “tone” as aggressive. If we feel threatened, then the “tone” was threatening. We are also likely to believe that the intention of the piece was to threaten or attack.
There are actually a lot of leaps in that path—it assumes not only that our reaction is a consequence of the text, but that our interpretation of the text is a reliable measure of intention. Every leap is problematic.
As Aristotle pointed out, we have beliefs about a speaker, and those beliefs influence how we react to what the speaker says. If an in-group rhetor makes a vehement speech with name-calling and threats toward an out-group, we don’t feel threatened. So, by the process above, we will not characterize the speech as threatening, even if it explicitly threatens an out-group. We’ll perceive the threats as not really serious, perhaps figurative or simply hyperbolic. In other words, we’ll say that the speaker didn’t really intend to threaten.
If, however, it’s an out-group rhetor, and the threats are about our in-group, we will feel threatened, and we will perceive the threats as real and sincerely made.
In short, judging the tone of a piece by our affective response guarantees that we will hold ourselves and in-group rhetors to lower standards than we hold out-group rhetors. (Probably while claiming the moral highground.)
Affective response is also strongly influenced by assumptions about what is appropriate for a group. Here’s what I mean by that. I’ve drifted around the digitally-connected world for a long time, and I’m argumentative. In some situations my gender has been clear, in others ambiguous, and in some I deliberately had a male name. I have often been tone policed (that is, told I was being too aggressive) but only when the interlocutor knew I’m a woman. I have never been tone policed when the interlocutor thought I was male. Not a single time.
When tone policed, I took to asking the officer, “When was the last time you tone policed a male?” I never got an answer.
Race also plays into this. Obama was (and still is) tone policed far more than white politicians, even by self-identified “liberals.” Pundits will complain about “immigrants” criticizing America (by “immigrants” they mean native-born children or grand-children of immigrants), saying those figures have no “right” to do so, but only if they disagree with the criticism. They didn’t see Trump’s vehement criticism of America as unpatriotic, if he was in-group for them, even though he is a grandchild of an immigrant, and was extremely critical of America.
Anti-slavery petitions were often written, signed, and submitted by women, and many of them were as deferential as it was possible to be while still being critical of an institution, but slavers complained about their tone, and about feeling attacked by them. Much of that had to do with an inability to take criticism (slavers were very thin-skinned) but also by a sense of outrage at a disruption of hierarchy (women criticizing men). Earl Warren’s tone in the internment hearings was not vehement or extreme (there was much hedging and qualifying) but the policy he was advocating was hateful and extreme–regardless of his feelings, or the feelings of his interlocutors.
There are a few other ways that notions of “niceness” can do real damage. For instance, it’s pretty common to have a family gathering in which it is acceptable for someone to say something racist, sexist, highly political, deliberately hurtful, or offensive but not acceptable for anyone to disagree with it, let alone point out that it’s racist, sexist, and so on. The person who names the harm is the one who is blamed for “starting a fight.” As with the anti-slavery petitions, the rules of niceness only go one way.
That inconsistent application of rules of discourse enables bullying; it is harmful and hurtful.
I’m not saying that we should argue with everyone at every opportunity—even I don’t do that—, but that standards of niceness have to be applied equally, or they aren’t actually very nice at all. This is complicated right now because the unofficial slogan of the GOP is “fuck your feelings.” And people who vote GOP are voting for a party headed by someone who is deliberately hurtful, insulting, and offensive. So, I do think it’s a little vexed to say that people to be careful about the feelings of GOP supporters.
In short, notions of decorum, civility, and niceness are often grounded in affective reaction, and that affective reaction is informed by in-group favoritism, unspoken norms about deference, and just generally ways of holding different people to different standards. It’s also sometimes informed by a squick about conflict. There are strategic reasons that one might choose the route of niceness (that is, evading conflict), even in a situation in which the rules are inconsistently applied, but it’s inaccurate and often harmful to pretend that rules of niceness are universal or universally ethical.