Toxic Discourse

Character, Causes, and Consequences

"Founder of Civility Project Calls It Quits" — Headline in The Caucus, the Politics and Government blog of The New York Times, January 12, 2011

On September 24, 2013 at 8:15 AM, the online editor at Popular Science, the monthly magazine that has been publishing articles on science and technology for the general reader since 1872, posted a brief announcement stating that the publication would no longer accept reader comments on its website. While Popular Science was "committed to fostering a lively intellectual debate" about the world of science, wrote editor Suzanne LaBarre in a post titled, "Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments" (LaBarre 2013), its website had become overwhelmed by "trolls and spambots," inhibiting the magazine's mission of informing the public about science and technology. Citing studies indicating that angry and ad hominem online comments, regardless of their source or credibility, skew readers' perceptions of an article and lead to polarized and negative interpretations of the text (Anderson et al. 2014), Popular Science felt "compelled" to shut down its online discussion section. The insults and epithets that passed for debate, wrote LaBarre in evident frustration, had the effect of undermining the mission of the magazine, and scientific knowledge generally:

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science. (LaBarre 2013)

Reasoning that reader comments shape public opinion, which influences public policy, which contributes to decisions about what kinds of research get funded, LaBarre declared, "Comments can be bad for science."

* * *

What is "toxic rhetoric"? How do we define the phrase? What are its features, its boundaries, its tropes? How has such rhetoric been characterized in popular and scholarly writing, and what reasons have been offered to explain its origins, growth, and influence? What are the consequences of toxic discourse? Why does it matter? What effects does it have upon our politics, our communications, our civic relations? How does it affect our students? Before we can articulate for Writing Studies an ethics responsive to conditions of contemporary public discourse, we should try to speak with some precision about the nature of that discourse to which we are responding. That is the aim of this chapter, in which I attempt to clarify the meaning, causes, and consequences of toxic discourse, or just what makes toxic discourse "toxic."

What Is Toxic Rhetoric?

The strident and confrontational nature of contemporary public argument in the United States has been characterized in different ways, with greater and lesser degrees of precision and partisanship, depending upon the purposes of those who would describe it. So, for example, toxic rhetoric may be defined as "incivility," a loosely defined term that can refer both to rude speech and boorish behavior (Forni 2008; Herbst 2010; Fritz 2013; Makau and Marty 2013), or it can be the subject to more exacting definitions, as in attempts to codify it as "hate speech" (Matsuda et al. 1993). Discussions of what I have termed toxic rhetoric can have frankly partisan overtones, as when those on the Right decry hypocrisy in Liberal appeals for civility (Hanson 2010), or they can be disinterested and scholarly, as in attempts by social scientists to provide empirical accounts of the features, appeal, and effects of toxic rhetoric (Berry and Sobieraj 2014). Let us now consider a few of these characterizations, drawing upon them in an effort to build a robust description of "toxic rhetoric."

Incivility. Perhaps the most widely accepted characterization of angry and abusive discourse is "incivility," or rude speech, which is commonly represented in the discourse of crisis. So, for example, Stephen L. Carter laments the "crisis" of incivility exemplified by the negative character of political campaigns, the maliciousness of "public moral argument," and the bitterness of campus debate over curricula, but also by rude motorists, pornography, and offensive heavy metal music (Carter 1998, 9–10). Janie M. Harden Fritz writes of the "crisis of incivility" (Fritz 2013, 1) with reference to the workplace, characterized by "unthinking or deliberate rudeness, cutting remarks, lack of attentiveness, and violation of expectations for interpersonal interaction" (71). For their part, legal scholars Eli Wald and Russell G. Pearce argue that lawyers are responsible for what they term "the current incivility crisis" as a result of neglecting their obligation to the public good in favor of a self-interested understanding of the legal profession (Wald and Pearce 2011). Perhaps the central theme of incivility is disregard for others, which, P. M. Forni writes, is "to look elsewhere, to withdraw attention — and, with it, respect and consideration" (Forni 2008, 7).

Hate Speech. The concept of "hate speech" provides another, often controversial lens for characterizing abusive public discourse. While the boundaries of what is considered hate speech are often hazy, the term has been defined as "speech attacks based on race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation or preference" (Walker 1994, 8, quoted in Gould 2005, 14 n5). Like incivility, hate speech can refer both to speech, such as racist jokes made at the expense of minority populations, as well as conduct, such as cross burning or spray-painting a swastika on the side of a synagogue. Abusive or uncivil speech is considered hate speech when directed at historically marginalized or persecuted groups or peoples, such as African Americans, Muslims, or Gays. Opponents of hate speech contend that it causes both emotional and physical damage to its victims, ranging from nightmares to post-traumatic stress syndrome to hypertension to suicide (Matsuda et al. 1993, 24). Legal scholar Patricia Williams has called hate speech a form of "spirit murder," given its effects on its targets (Williams 1987, 129; qtd. in Matsuda et al. 1993, 24).

In the 1980s and 1990s, US colleges and universities became testing grounds for the legal status of hate speech, as administrators attempted to respond to the increasing number of racially motivated incidents on campuses, which according to one study increased an astonishing 400 percent between 1985 and 1990 (Uelmen n.d.). In 1989, for example, The...