FEBRUARY 3, 2012
\nBy Shannice Singletary \u201914, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Ill-mannered celebrities, games glorifying sex and violence, hazing, and outrageous public displays. Civility, it seems, is under assault. Why?<\/p>\n
Robert Hariman, a theorist of political style and\u00a0chair of the Department of\u00a0Communication Studies at Northwestern University, said it\u2019s simple: \u201cIncivility pays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, Hariman spoke at Furman\u00a0about the importance of civility and political ethics in discourse. The speech,\u00a0sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies,\u00a0challenged listeners to rethink the way they view and use civility to tackle issues.<\/p>\n
The university community is no stranger to the term “civility.” Last fall, President Rob Smolla led a\u00a0panel discussion on \u201cCivility in Public Discourse.\u201d And this year, a 40-member task force chaired by the president is examining public discourse on campus.<\/p>\n
In a society where the loudest and most obnoxious voices often rise above others, Hariman says civility in discourse is a topic that needs to be constantly evaluated.<\/p>\n
He first gave a brief outline of political discourse and discussed how civility has been reflected in modern events, such as the tense,\u00a0drama-filled 2012 presidential campaign. Due to the prevalence of mud-slinging, trash-talking and other less than civil speech, a majority of the public has had enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic speech today has been deregulated and consequently devalued,\u201d he said. \u201cTalk becomes cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hariman called for a \u201creassessment\u201d of civility but cautioned the public not to ask too much. Civility, he said, requires a certain level of self-sacrifice from the speaker, a sacrifice many are unwilling to make.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people are indifferent by nature, [and] we first need a certain level of moral sentiment in order to supplement that indifference. From there, we can begin tackling the issues of how to go about curing society of its more ill-mannered tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FEBRUARY 3, 2012
By Shannice Singletary ’14, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Ill-mannered celebrities, games glorifying sex and violence, hazing, and outrageous public displays. Civility, it seems, is under assault. Why?<\/p>\n
Robert Hariman, a theorist of political style and chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, said it’s simple: “Incivility pays.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-communication-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}