Hypocrisy And The Politics Of Politeness

In Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness, Jenny Davidson considers the arguments that define hypocrisy as a moral and political virtue in its own right. She shows that these were arguments that thrived in the medium of eighteenth-century Britain's culture of politeness. In the debate about the balance between truthfulness and politeness, Davidson argues that eighteenth-century writers from Locke to Austen come down firmly on the side of politeness. This is the case even when it is associated with dissimulation or hypocrisy. These writers argue that the open profession of vice is far more dangerous for society than even the most glaring discrepancies between what people say in public and what they do in private. This book explores what happens when controversial arguments in favour of hypocrisy enter the mainstream, making it increasingly hard to tell the difference between hypocrisy and more obviously attractive qualities like modesty, self-control and tact.

Jenny Davidson considers the arguments that define hypocrisy as a moral and political virtue in its own right. She shows that these were arguments that thrived in eighteenth-century Britain's culture of politeness. Davidson examines the attitude of such writers as Locke and Austen towards hypocrisy.

This is a fresh examination of the letters exchanged between Cicero and his correspondents, during the final decades of the Roman Republic. Drawing upon sociolinguistic theories of politeness, it explores the distinctive conventions of epistolary courtesy that shaped formal interaction among men of the Roman elite.

A critical assessement of the problems of sincerity and truth in politics argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics without resigning ourselves to it or embracing it, drawing on the lessons of such thinkers as Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sigwick, and Orwell.

This first in-depth study of women’s politeness examines the complex relationship individuals had with the discursive ideals of polite femininity. Contextualising women’s autobiographical writings (journals and letters) with a wide range of eighteenth-century printed didactic material, it analyses the tensions between politeness discourse which aimed to regulate acceptable feminine identities and women’s possibilities to resist this disciplinary regime. Ylivuori focuses on the central role the female body played as both the means through which individuals actively fashioned themselves as polite and feminine, and the supposedly truthful expression of their inner status of polite femininity.

This volume explores a pivotal period in European history, the ‘long’ nineteenth century. Politeness scholars have suggested that the nineteenth century heralds a significant transition in the meanings and realisations of politeness, between the Ancien Régime and the contemporary period, with the rise of the middle classes as economic, political, social and cultural actors. The central innovation of this volume consists in its use of a wide range of politeness metasources — grammar books, schoolbooks, conduct books, etiquette books, and letter-writing manuals — to access social norms. This interdisciplinary approach, which draws on historical linguistics, argumentation theory, appraisal theory and literary stylistics, is applied to a wide range of languages: English, including Scottish and business English, Italian, Spanish, West and South Slavic languages. As a highly coherent collection of innovative research papers, the volume will be welcomed by researchers of (im)politeness, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, both from a historical and contemporary perspective.

We live in an age where one person's judicial "activist" legislating from the bench is another's impartial arbiter fairly interpreting the law. After the Supreme Court ended the 2000 Presidential election with its decision in Bush v. Gore, many critics claimed that the justices had simply voted their political preferences. But Justice Clarence Thomas, among many others, disagreed and insisted that the Court had acted according to legal principle, stating: "I plead with you, that, whatever you do, don't try to apply the rules of the political world to this institution; they do not apply." The legitimacy of our courts rests on their capacity to give broadly acceptable answers to controversial questions. Yet Americans are divided in their beliefs about whether our courts operate on unbiased legal principle or political interest. Comparing law to the practice of common courtesy, Keith Bybee explains how our courts not only survive under these suspicions of hypocrisy, but actually depend on them. Law, like courtesy, furnishes a means of getting along. It frames disputes in collectively acceptable ways, and it is a habitual practice, drummed into the minds of citizens by popular culture and formal institutions. The rule of law, thus, is neither particularly fair nor free of paradoxical tensions, but it endures. Although pervasive public skepticism raises fears of judicial crisis and institutional collapse, such skepticism is also an expression of how our legal system ordinarily functions.

Do unto others as you would others should do to you. You can never be rude if you bear the rule always in mind, for what lady likes to be treated rudely? True Christian politeness will always be the result of an unselfish regard for the feelings of others, and though you may err in the ceremonious points of etiquette, you will never be im polite. Politeness, founded upon such a rule, becomes the expression, in graceful manner, of social virtues. The spirit of politeness consists in a certain attention to forms and ceremonies, which are meant both to please others and ourselves, and to make others pleased with us ;a still clearer definition may be given by saying that politeness is goodness of heart put into daily practice; the.re can be no true, politeness without kindness, purity, singleness of heart, and sensibility. Many believe that politeness is but a mask worn in the world to conceal bad passions and impulses, and to make a show of possessing virtues not really existing in the heart; thus, that politeness is merely hypocrisy and dissimulation. Do not believe this; be certain that those who profess such a doctrine are practising themselves the deceit they condemn so much.