Coercive impoliteness and blame avoidance in government communication

Abstract

As government officeholders face criticism for misconduct or policy failures, they are tempted to communicate in self-defensive ways. In this paper, I draw attention to how strategic blame avoidance in government may involve coercive impoliteness, that is, the use of expressions that attack the face of (potential) critics with an aim of forcing them to withhold their (future) criticism. Taking a discourse-historical approach to political rhetoric, I present illustrative examples of institutional government messaging from the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Russia to demonstrate how these face attacks may be accomplished in subtle ways, such as via sarcasm or mock politeness. I discuss the ethical implications of the uses of coercive impoliteness in government communication for democratic debates over public policy issues. The paper contributes to the study of political blame games, language aggression, and incivility in (digitally) mediated contexts.