Civility as institutionally specific communication norms: concept, theory, and methodology

Civility can be understood as a general analytical category capturing social patterns of conduct and the informal norms seeking to regulate such conduct. Within normative political theory, civility in this broad sense has been discussed at a societal level, either as general social norms of politeness and social interaction among citizens or as general political norms for how to engage in politics. Such discussions of civility have linked to discussions of free speech, since civility norms seek to regulate and constrain social or political speech. Where traditional free speech discussions focus on formal restrictions on speech articulated in laws enforced by state coercion, civility norms regulate speech more informally and are enforced through social sanctions. But not all regulations of speech are general in these senses. Most norms seeking to regulate communicative conduct are context-specific, often in relation to institutional contexts where people participate not as citizens but in specific roles. The paper focuses on what civility can mean in such context-specific respects, how it can be studied as such, and how this study involves bridging empirical and normative inquiry. This perspective on civility as institutionally specific communication norms requires theoretical distinctions between different modes of regulating speech. In classic free speech discussions, focus is on state regulation through coercively enforced laws. In standard civility debates, focus is on general civility norms. In context-specific perspectives, further regulatory modes become visible, that are neither based on law or state coercion nor are linked to the general role of citizens. In institutionally defined contexts, one can distinguish between more or less formal regulations of speech, some of which will resemble civility norms and others which will resemble legal regulation. The paper provides a theoretical framework for distinguishing between different forms of such context-specific communicative speech regulations and norms. It links these categories to the normative concerns debated in free speech theory, especially debates about “chilling effects” and self-censorship. Where these forms of informal restrictions on speech have traditionally been discussed as general worries about how laws or social pressures might affect speech, the purpose of the framework is to invite empirical studies of which factors actually have chilling effects or get people to self-censor in specific contexts, thus empirically informing the normative debate about civility and free speech. The paper seeks to link such empirical findings with normative concerns in both directions, so to speak, so that the study aims both at empirically identifying factors that trigger normative concerns and informing the theoretical discussion of what one should be worried about from a free speech perspective. Finally, the chapter considers the methodological implications of adopting this focus in relation to recent debates about the methodology of political theory, including the cross-disciplinary consequences of adopting contextualist and practice-dependent approaches such as “ethnographic sensibility”.