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This essay analyzes Senate debate over the nomination of John Ashcroft for Attorney General using Kenneth Burke's theory of form in an effort to understand how (in)civility is created through the argumentative process. Personal attacks are nearly always rhetorically justified by senators who make them: Senators carefully create and then satisfy an appetite for incivility. This conclusion indicates that the norm of civility constrains floor rhetoric, but that civility needs to be rethought as a rhetorical enactment in relation to multiple audiences, rather than simply as a set of unwritten rules. Such an approach foregrounds audience fragmentation as an influence on Congressional speech and conceptualizes civility as a rhetorical choice made by speakers within the constraints of normative behaviors.
Observers of the United States Congress have complained that incivility contributes to several significant problems. For instance, Uslaner (1993) concluded that the modern House and Senate are less friendly and more partisan, due to a lack of civility, both in personal relations and in floor debate. He and others have argued that both Congressional bodies have been weakened by becoming institutions in which cooperation, an essential feature of any legislative body, has suffered (Jamieson, 1997; Sinclair, 1989; Uslaner, 1991, 1993, 2000; Weisberg, Heberlig, & Campoli, 1999). Incivility often includes personal attacks (rather than the criticism of ideas) and has been denounced by both scholars and members of Congress as detrimental to constructive debate (Byrd, 1995; Carter, 1998; Jamieson, 1997; Loomis, 2000; Uslaner, 1991, 1993, 2000). Conversely, Loomis (2000) argued that civility is grounded in the "free exchange of ideas" (pp. 2-3), and Arnett (1999, 2001) theorized that the primary characteristic of civility is that it keeps channels of communication open rather than closed. Civility is grounded in a concern with other points of view in a way that encourages others to participate in public discussion.
Civility is clearly of concern to both observers of and participants in Congressional debate, and the literature on civility is far-reaching. Authors have discussed civility in a number of settings, including Congress (Evans & Oleszek, 1998; Jamieson, 1997; Loomis, 2000; Sinclair, 1989; Uslaner, 1991, 1993, 2000; Weisberg et al., 1999), the workplace (Gonthier, 2002; Pearson, Andersson, & Porath, 2000; Sypher, 2004), the judicial system (Cortina et al., 2002), the...