Situated impoliteness: the interface between relational work and identity construction

This chapter reports on ongoing research interest in relational work, and impoliteness in particular. The author's interest in impoliteness comes from her research focus on power and politeness in disagreements, where she looked at conflictual data (Locher, 2004). While research on politeness has beein going strong since the 1970s, research on impoliteness has only recently picked up momentum, as for example evidenced by the 2006 and 2009 conferences on impoliteness and rudeness in Huddersfield and Lancaster, the special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research (Bousfield and Culpeper, 2008), the first monograph on impoliteness (Bousfield, 2008a), and edited collections on rudeness and impoliteness (Gorji, 2007; Bousfield and Locher, 2008). A few early exceptions are Lachenicht (1980), Kienpointner (1997), Culpeper (1996) and Culpeper et al. (2003). Research on impoliteness is motivated by the sociological importance of tackling the perceived increasing problems of blatant rudeness and inconsiderateness which are said to negatively affect public life in Britain, as for example evidenced by Tony Blair's 'respect agenda', and as studied by Jonathan Culpeper (2006) in his ESRC research project on 'Impoliteness : using language to cause offence'. These topical reasons, along with an interest in the interpersonal side of communication most generally, have led the author to return her interest to conflictual behaviour and behaviour that might be deemed rude or impolite.