Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T09:23:37.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - Morality in Sociopragmatics

from Part II - Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

By
Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich  and
Dániel Z. Kádár
Edited by
Michael Haugh ,
Dániel Z. Kádár  and
Marina Terkourafi
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Dániel Z. Kádár
Affiliation:
Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages
Marina Terkourafi
Affiliation:
Leiden University
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the interconnections between sociopragmatics and morality. Notions of morality and the moral order have been recently incorporated into research on im/politeness and could potentially be of interest to other sub-fields of sociopragmatics. We review extant conceptualizations of the moral order and insights from moral psychology and propose ways of bringing the two traditions together by seeing morality as instantiated in the moral order and the latter as part and parcel of situated practice. Furthermore, we examine and elaborate on what we believe to be the fundamental links between im/politeness and moral evaluations and discuss how insights gained from research on in/civility and morality can be useful to im/politeness scholarship. In our case study, we briefly illustrate the application of moral psychology models to the analysis of im/politeness by drawing from Rai and Fiske’s Relationship Regulation Theory and conclude the chapter offering suggestions for new avenues of research that could be explored not only by im/politeness scholars but also by researchers working in other sub-fields of sociopragmatics.

Keywords

moralitymoral ordermoral psychology(im)politeness
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 385 - 407
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archer, D. (2011). Facework and im/politeness across legal contexts: An introduction. Journal of Politeness Research, 7(1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beer, D. (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious. New Media and Society, 11(6), 985–1002.Google Scholar
Billante, N. and Saunders, P. (2004). Why civility matters. Policy, 18(3), 32–36.Google Scholar
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Buss, S. (1999). Appearing respectful: The moral significance of manners. Ethics, 109(4), 795–826.Google Scholar
Calhoun, C.. (2000). The virtue of civility. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 29(3), 251–75.Google Scholar
Carter, S. L. (1998). Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. (2006). Moral decision-making and the brain. In Illes, J., ed., Neuroethics: Defining the Issues in Theory, Practice, and Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D. (2017). Introduction. In Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–8.Google Scholar
Davies, B. (2018). Evaluating evaluations: What different types of metapragmatic behaviour can tell us about participants’ understandings of the moral order. Journal of Politeness Research, 14(1), 121–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, M. (2001). Implicit Meanings. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Durkheim, É. ([1925] 1973). Moral Education. Translated by Wilson, E. and Schnurer, H.. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Eelen, G. (2001). A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2010). A genre approach to the study of im-politeness. International Review of Pragmatics, 2(1), 46–94.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2013). Face, identity, and im/politeness: Looking backwards, moving forward – From Goffman to Practice Theory, Journal of Politeness Research, 9(1), 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P., Bou-Franch, P. and Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2010). A genre-approach to im-politeness in a Spanish TV talk show: Evidence from corpus-based analysis, questionnaires and focus groups. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(4), 689–723.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. and Vasilaki, M. (2018). The personal and/as the political: Small stories and impoliteness in online discussions of the Greek crisis. Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 215–40.Google Scholar
Graham, S. L. (2018). Impoliteness and the moral order in online gaming. Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 303–28.Google Scholar
Frese, M. (2015). Cultural practices, norms, and values. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(10), 1327–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2009). Impoliteness and identity in the American news media: The ‘culture wars’. Journal of Politeness Research, 5(2), 273–303.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2012). ‘Politics, “lies” and YouTube: A genre approach to assessments of im/politeness on Obama’s 9/9/2009 presidential address’. In Fernández-Amaya, L., López, M. Hernández, Morón, R. Gómez, Cruz, M. Padilla, Borrero, M. Mejias and Barranca, M. Relinque, eds., New Perspectives on (Im)politeness and Interpersonal Communication. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 62–90.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1964). Studies of the routine grounds of everyday activities. Social Problems, 11(3), 225–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1956). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1963). Behaviour in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J. and Nosek, B. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96 , 1029–46.Google Scholar
Hardy, S. and Carlo, G. (2005). Identity as a source of moral motivation. Human Development, 48, 232–56.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. (2008). Morality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(1), 65–72.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. and Craig, J. (2011). How moral foundations theory succeeded in building on sand: A response to Suhler and Churchland. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(9), 2117–22.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. and Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognise. Social Justice Research, 20 , 98–116.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. and Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus, 133 , 55–66.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. and Joseph, C. (2008). The moral mind: How five sets of innate moral intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S., eds., The Innate Mind: Vol. 3. Foundations and the Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 367–91.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. (2013). Im/politeness, social practice and the participation order. Journal of Pragmatics, 58, 52–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, M. (2019). Strangers and everyday incivilities: Towards a theory of moral affordances in ritualised interaction. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 31–54.Google Scholar
Hwang, H., Kim, Y. and Kim, Y. (2018). Influence of discussion incivility on deliberation: An examination of the mediating role of moral indignation. Communication Research, 45(2), 213–40.Google Scholar
Jay, T. (2018). Swearing, moral order, and online communication. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 6(1), 107–26.Google Scholar
Jones, R. H. (2017). Surveillant landscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 3(2), 149–86.Google Scholar
Jucker, A. (2012). Changes in politeness cultures. In Nevelainen, T. and Closs Traugott, E., eds., The Oxford Handbook of The History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 422–431.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. (2017). Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral order in Interpersonal Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. (2020). Capturing injunctive norm in pragmatics: Meta-reflective evaluations and the moral order. Lingua 237: 102814.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. and Haugh, M. (2013).  Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. and Márquez-Reiter, R. (2015). (Im)politeness and (im)morality: Insights from intervention. Journal of Politeness Research, 11(2), 239–60.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. and Fukushima, S. (2018). The meta-conventionalisation and moral order of e-practices: A Japanese case study. Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 352–78.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z. and Ning, P. (2019). Ritual public humiliation – A case study of Chinese adulterous couples. Acta Linguistica Academica, 66(2),189–208.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z., Parvaresh, V. and Ning, P. (2019). Morality, moral order, and language conflict and aggression – A position paper. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 6–30.Google Scholar
Kádár, D. Z., Ran, Y. and Ning, P. (2018). Public ritual apology – A case study of Chinese. Discourse, Context and Media, 26, 21–31. Google Scholar
Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In Goslin, D. A., ed., Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research. Chicago: Rand McNally, pp. 387–480.Google Scholar
Lakoff, R. T. (2005). Civility and its discontents: or getting in your face. In Lakoff, R. T. and Ide, S., eds., Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 23–43.Google Scholar
Leach, C., Ellemers, N. and Barreto, M. (2007). Group virtue: The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(2), 234–49.Google Scholar
Locher, M. A. and Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1, 9–33.Google Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, N., Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. and Bou-Franch, P. (2011). Online polylogues and impoliteness: The case of postings sent in response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube video. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 2578–93.Google Scholar
Márquez-Reiter, R. and Orthaber, S. (2018). Exploring the moral compass. Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 241–70.Google Scholar
Márquez-Reiter, R. and Haugh, M. (2019). Denunciation, blame and the moral turn in public life. Discourse, Context and Media, 28, 35–43.Google Scholar
Mills, S. (2003). Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, S. (2009). Impoliteness in a cultural context. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(5), 1047–60.Google Scholar
Moulinou, I. (2014). Striving to make the difference: Linguistic devices of moral indignation. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 2(1), 74–98.Google Scholar
Molinou, I. (2019). Moral ‘tropes’, moral panic against witnesses and victim in court: explicit and implicit discursive strategies of moral aggression. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 103–30.Google Scholar
Papacharissi, Z. (2004). Democracy online: Civility, politeness, and the democratic potential of online political discussion groups. New Media and Society, 6(2), 259–83.Google Scholar
Parvaresh, V. (2019). Moral impoliteness. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 79–104.Google Scholar
Parvaresh, V. and Tayebi, T. (2018). Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 132, 91–107.Google Scholar
Pearce, W. B. and Littlejohn, S. W. (1997). Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Pearson, C., Anderson, L. and Wegner, J. (2001). When workers flout convention: A study of workplace incivility. Human Relations, 54(11), 1387–1419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peltonen, M. (2003). The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Placencia, M. E. (2001). Inequality in address behavior at public institutions in La Paz, Bolivia. Anthropological Linguistics, 43, 198–217.Google Scholar
Placencia, M. E. (2010). (Des)cortesía, migración y comunicación intercultural. In Orletti, F. and Mariottini, L., eds., (Des)cortesía en español. Espacios teóricos y metodológicos para su estudio. Rome: Roma Universidad Roma Tre – Programa EDICE, pp. 399–430.Google Scholar
Plessner Lyons, N. (1983). Two perspectives: On self, relationships, and morality. Harvard Educational Review, 53(2), 125–45.Google Scholar
Rai, T. S. and Fiske, A. P. (2012). Beyond harm, intention, and dyads: Relationship regulation, virtuous violence, and metarelational morality. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 189–93.Google Scholar
Rai, T. S. and Fiske, A. P. (2011). Moral psychology is relationship regulation: Moral motives for unity, hierarchy, equality, and proportionality. Psychological Review, 118, 57–75.Google Scholar
Rai, T. S. and Fiske, A. P. (2016). The morality of violence. In Sommers, T., ed., A Very Bad Wizard: Morality behind the Curtain, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, pp. 253–71.Google Scholar
Ran, Y. and Zhao, L. (2018). Building mutual affection-based face in conflict mediation: A Chinese relationship management model. Journal of Pragmatics, 129, 185–98.Google Scholar
Rawls, A. W. (1987). The interaction order sui generis: Goffman’s contribution to social theory. Sociological Theory, 5, 136–49.Google Scholar
Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practice. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243–63.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S. H. (1970). Moral decision making and behaviour. In Macauley, M. and Berkowitz, L., eds., Altruism and Helping Behaviour. New York: Academic Press, pp. 127–41.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S. (1994). Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of Social Issues, 50(4), 19–45.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S. (2007). Universalism values and the inclusiveness of our moral universe. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38, 711–28.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S. H., Cieciuch, J., Vecchione, M., Davidov, E., Fischer, R., Beierlein, C. and Konty, M. (2012). Refining the theory of basic individual values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 663–88.Google Scholar
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M. and Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity) and the “big three” explanations of suffering. In Brandt, A. and Rozin, P., eds., Morality and Health. New York: Routledge, pp. 119–69.Google Scholar
Sell, R. (1992). Literary texts and diachronic aspects of politeness. In Watts, R. J., Ide, S. and Ehlich, K., eds., Politeness in Language: Studies in Its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 109–29.Google Scholar
Sifianou, M. (2019). Im/politeness and in/civility: A neglected relationship? Journal of Pragmatics, 147, 49–64.Google Scholar
Sinkeviciute, V. (2018). “Ya bloody drongo!!!”: Impoliteness as situated moral judgement on Facebook. Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 271–302.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. and Kádár, D. (2016). The bases of (im)politeness evaluations: Culture, the moral order and the East-West debate. East Asian Pragmatics, 1(1), 73–106.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. and Kádár, D. (2020). Intercultural Politeness: Relating across Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, H. and Xing, J. (2019). Interdisciplinary perspectives on interpersonal relations and the evaluation process: Culture, norms, and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 151, 141–54.Google Scholar
Suhler, C. L. and Churchland, P. (2001). Can innate, modular “foundations” explain morality? Challenges for Haidt’s moral foundations theory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(9), 2103–16.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, M., Catedral, L., Haider, I., Karimzad, F., Melgares, J., Mostacero, C., Nelson, J. and Weissman, B. (2018). Uncivil Twitter: A sociopragmatic analysis, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 6(1), 26–57.Google Scholar
Turner, G. (2010). Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Truss, L. (2005). Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today; or, Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Varis, P. and van Nuenen, T. (2017). The Internet, language, and virtual interactions. In García, O., Flores, N. and Spotti, M., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 473–88.Google Scholar
van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Verschueren, J. (2012). Ideology in Language Use: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Watts, R. J. (1989). Relevance and relational work: Linguistic politeness as politic behavior. Multilingua. Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 8(2–3), 131–66.Google Scholar
Watts, R. J. (1999). Language and politeness in early eighteenth century Britain. Pragmatics, 9(1), 5–20.Google Scholar
Watts, R. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Werkhofer, K. T. (1992). Traditional and modern views: The social constitution and power of politeness. In Watts, R., Ide, S. and Ehlich, K., eds., Politeness in Language: Studies in Its History: Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 155–99.Google Scholar
Wuthnow, R. (1989). Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Xie, C. (2018). (Im)politeness, morality and the internet. Internet Pragmatics, 1(2), 205–14.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×