Dangerous politeness? Understandings of politeness in the COVID-19 era and beyond

Abstract What (im)politeness means changes over time. As these changes are usually gradual, we tend to be relatively unaware of them. However, when changes are abrupt, people not only notice but are also concerned with them. The COVID-19 pandemic entailed such abrupt changes involving new rules most of which are at odds with the rather automatic conventions of politeness that we follow. My aim in this paper is to explore what politeness means to non-academics in the context of the pandemic and how similar or different their understandings are from academic accounts. To this end, I will draw from an online article entitled “Your politeness is a public health hazard”, which appeared at the onset of the pandemic, and the user-generated comments it triggered. The discussion is placed within the discursive turn in (im)politeness research, considering its key distinction between first-order and second-order conceptualisations of politeness. The findings suggest that politeness in the pandemic is still mostly understood as consideration for the other, an understanding shared with (im)politeness research. However, posters’ views are broader overlapping with understandings of ‘civility’. These views manifest their knowledge as observers and participants of social reality but also reveal that they are in dialogue with work in philosophy, sociology and psychology.