CJS Online January-February 2005

Richard J. Watts Politeness.

Cambridge University Press, 2003, 318 pp. $US 25.00 paper (0-521-79406-4), $US 70.00 hardcover (0-521-79085-9) A better title for this book may have been (Im)politeness, given author Richard J. Watts insistence that the concept be central to any investigation into the emerging field of linguistic politeness. For Watts, the concept of (im)politeness expresses what he terms first-order interpretive struggles over the discursive domain of lay conceptions of politeness and impoliteness (8). The concept not only serves to emphasize the myriad of ways that (im)polite conduct is evaluated and commented on by interlocutors in everyday life, but it also shifts the object of analysis away from the established circles within socio-linguistics that make universal claims about politeness to interrogating variations within accepted and unaccepted forms of social interaction by participants themselves (11). Moreover, and this is perhaps of particular interest for a sociological audience, he seeks to demonstrate how (im)politeness is historically and culturally variable, constituted by and through power relations. Intended as an accessible introduction to sociolinguistics and especially the field of linguistic politeness, the author departs from the dominant research paradigm established by Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]) in their ground-breaking Universals in language use: Politeness phenomena. To this end, Watts introduces a conceptual distinction between (Im)politeness1, a concept that signifies a range of disputed notions of polite and impolite behaviour, and Politeness2, a term used to represent universal claims about politeness as a particular form of social interaction that can be found in any socio-cultural group independent of time and place (9, 12). In enumerating the dangers and problems associated with generating a universal notion of politeness, Watts relies on a distinctly sociological conception of interaction that emphasizes both its interpretive quality and the role of power in shaping the form and content of (im)polite conduct. His goal is to contribute to a theory of politeness that locates possible realizations of polite or impolite behaviour and to offer a way of assessing how the members themselves may have evaluated that behaviour (19). In so doing, he gives an extensive review of the limitations of the prevailing literature on linguistic politeness by drawing on a range of everyday speech situations. He argues that many of the pitfalls in this literature can be ameliorated by utilizing the concepts of habitus, symbolic power and symbolic violence associated with Pierre Bourdieus theory of practice. Bourdieus conceptual apparatus gives Watts the intellectual grounds to call for an approach to socio-linguistics that seeks to demonstrate when and perhaps why individual users of language verbally classify utterances as polite rather than to explain what utterances are polite as a universal standard (160). The centrality of Bourdieus work to Watts conceptual schema makes this book especially relevant for sociologists (not to mention a burgeoning sociological field of inquiry devoted to civility, politeness and character). But while the book is certainly serviceable as an introduction to linguistic politeness, it is less effective as an application of Bourdieus work or as a contribution to sociological interest in politeness. Part of the problem rests with the central place Watts gives to politic behaviour, a concept designed to show linguistic behaviour which is perceived to be appropriate to the social constraints of the ongoing interaction and which is distinguished from

Canadian Journal of Sociology Online January-February 2005

Watts, Politeness - 2

(im)polite behaviour that is perceived to be beyond what is expectable (19, 161). These concepts offer a means of distinguishing the appropriate domain of (im)politeness and establishing its contestability and historical situatedness. Watts admits that the notion of politic behaviour may be controversial for those who would like to equate expected behaviour with polite behaviour, but this aspect is perhaps less controversial for sociologists given a somewhat careless appropriation of Bourdieus conceptual framework. Watts argues that his notion of politic behaviour is similar to Bourdieus concept of habitus, which he characterizes as the set of dispositions to act in certain ways, which generates cognitive and bodily practices in the individual. The set of dispositions is acquired through socialization (149). Watts notes that the habitus is generative of practices that negotiate resources in the marketplace of capital in a given field. While this rendering of Bourdieus habitus may seem reasonably unproblematic, even if a little impoverished, what makes Watts discussion particularly nettlesome is that he seems to imply that the habitus merely represents subjective structures that are combined with the objective structures of a field. He thereby neglects the extent to which the habitus mediates objectivity and subjectivity because it is simultaneously composed of structured structures and structuring structures (Bourdieu 1977:72; 1990:53). In a telling phrase, Watts argues that [S]ocial practice is thus equivalent to the ways that the product of the subjective structures internalized as his or her habitus multiplied by the capital the individual has gained in the marketplace is combined with the objectified social structures of the field (150). This is rendered too neatly as a causal relationship [(habitus) (capital)] + field=practice] that belies a more nuanced understanding of the way that the habitus signifies a mutually constitutive relationship between individual and social practices. For Watts, language is the cornerstone of habitus, and consequently he claims that linguistic practice is a product of a distinctive linguistic habitus and linguistic capital that are situated in relation to a linguistic maketplace (150). The effect is a fairly mechanical conception of habitus that is not only reductive, but avoids elaborating the real potential that Bourdieu offers a theory of linguistic politeness through le sens pratique, that is the intuitive know-how that designates the embodied, involuntary understandings of social life that are not always cognitively perceived (Bourdieu 1990:66-69). If politic behaviour is to be distinguished from (im)polite behaviour on the grounds that the latter exceeds normally expected behaviour in a linguistic situation, it seems problematic to claim that the former is consonant with habitus because the dispositions of the habitus always include within themselves classificatory schemas that situate and assess both expected and unexpected forms of behaviour. For Bourdieu, the habitus operates as means of distinction that allows one to discern differences that only become socially pertinent if they are perceived by one who is capable of making the distinction (1998:9). Habitus understood this way not only enables one to identify forms of (im)polite behaviour, but seems to easily express both politic and (im)polite forms of behaviour. A further problem is that Watts argument appears to depend on an attenuated conception of symbolic power that often seems to stand in for a conception of power tout court. Here, symbolic power is the ability to use the capital in a specific social field in order to change the social order of the field deliberately but without being perceived to do so (277). While Watts captures the extent to which symbolic power is something that is exercised only if it is recognized, that is, misrecognized as arbitrary (Bourdieu 1991:170, emphasis in original), he neglects the extent to which symbolic power represents a set of force relations that necessarily rests on a foundation of shared beliefs.

Canadian Journal of Sociology Online January-February 2005

Watts, Politeness - 3

Symbolic power thus generates capital that is based on the mutual recognition of attributes such as honour, nobility, politeness that are only available to agents endowed with dispositions adjusted to the logic of disinterestedness (Bourdieu 1997:234-235). For Bourdieu, disinterestedness is associated with an ethic of generosity that transcends ones particular interests in relation to a given field. Consequently, symbolic power as manifest in the struggle over symbolic capital is necessarily grounded in shared meanings and thus, seems at odds with Watts desire to avoid associating politeness with social harmony or cooperation (143). Again, the truncated form of these concepts contains and limits the conceptual and substantive possibilities that Bourdieu might otherwise offer linguistic politeness. Despite these criticisms, the books stands as a useful introduction to the study of linguistic politeness, and is notable for its attention to the play of force relations in constituting social interaction. Melanie White Department of Sociology, Trent University melaniewhite@trentu.ca
Melanie White is the author of a number of articles on civility, character and citizenship. Previously, she has held a Canada Research Chair Postdoctoral Fellowship in Citizenship Studies (2003) and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship (2004). References Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . 1990. [1980]. The Logic of Practice. Translated by R. Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. . 1991. [1982]. Language and Symbolic Power. Translated by G. Raymond and M. Adamson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. . 1997. "Marginalia -- Some Additional Notes on the Gift." Pp. 231-241 in The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, edited by A. D. Schrift. New York: Routledge. . 1998. [1994]. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Brown, Penelope and Steven Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/cjscopy/reviews/politeness.html January 2005 Canadian Journal of Sociology Online