Audience perceptions of politeness and advocacy skills in the 2000 and 2004 presidential debates.

• Author: Dailey, William O.

Barber (1992) has argued that a candidate's image, what the public thinks about a candidate, is important to a candidate's success. Because debates are about differences and disagreements, how one responds to criticisms of leadership capacity reveals one's political image to viewers. Audiences observe candidates in the debates to reinforce prior commitments, gain information about the candidates, and, in some instances, determine which candidate to support in a campaign. Because debates engender confrontation and conflict over policy, character, and priorities, they place each candidate's political image at risk. While some research has treated arguments over policy or character as distinct (Benoit, 2003; Benoit & Brazeal, 2002; Benoit & Harthcock, 1999; Benoit & Wells, 1996), debates can constitute complex instances of facework since issue and image are often interrelated (Hacker, Zakahi, Giles & McQuitty, 2000; Hinck, 1993; Weiss, 1981).

How a candidate goes about answering criticisms of one's policies, priorities, or character reveals something about the candidate's personality that cannot be ascertained without the interaction of the opponent. In this respect, debates are highly charged campaign events. Candidates must publicly create and endure an adversarial relationship with face at stake while maintaining standards of civil regard for their opponent. The audience watches for the purpose of deliberating who gained or lost face, and by implication, which candidate is best fit to serve in office (Hinck & Hinck, 2002).

The research reported here responds to the Racine Group's (2002) call for more longitudinal, theoretically driven studies of presidential debates. To do so, we outline politeness theory according to Brown and Levinson (1987), explain the relevance of politeness theory to political debates in terms of face, and suggest that politeness is a useful way to explain how debates accomplish their effects on audiences, a primary concern for debate scholars noted by the Racine Group (2002). Finally, we report findings from two studies of prospective voters in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and consider the promise of politeness theory as an approach to political debates.

POLITENESS THEORY

According to Brown and Levinson (1987), politeness functions to regulate the potential for aggression in everyday interaction.

From a gross ethological perspective ... politeness, deference and tact have a sociological significance altogether beyond the level of table manners and etiquette books (Goffman 1971: 90); politeness, like formal diplomatic protocol (for which it must surely be the model), presupposes that potential for aggression as it seeks to disarm it, and makes possible communication between potentially aggressive parties. (p. 1)

Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that politeness is constructed, that the element of successful cooperation between members of a community is achieved through

a precise semiotics of peaceful vs. aggressive intentions (where the measure of precision is sometimes in fractions of a second-see e.g. Davidson 1984), which in assigning such momentous significance to what are often trivial substantive acts requires a constant vigilance over the manner in which social interaction is conducted. This semiotic system is then responsible for the shaping of much everyday interaction, and in so shaping it, constitutes a potent form of social control. (pp. 1-2)

At stake in interaction is social face, which takes two forms. Brown and Levinson (1987) state:

Central to our model is a highly abstract notion of 'face' which consists of two specific kinds of desires ('face wants') attributed by interactants to one another: the desire to be unimpeded in one's actions (negative face), and the desire (in some respects) to be approved of (positive face). This is the bare bones of a notion of face which (we argue) is universal, but which in any particular society we would expect to be the subject of much cultural elaboration. (p. 13)

Certainly, debates are complex social interactions that require the management of aggression. Candidates are called upon to criticize their opponents; thus, each candidate's face is at stake in a debate (Hinck & Hinck, 2002). Yet, according to Brown and Levinson (1987), given the universal nature of social interaction, candidates must find ways of cooperating while competing. Since debates are highly staged public and televised campaign events, the stakes regarding a candidate's face are enormous. The tension between expectations for aggressiveness and expectations regarding appropriateness constitutes the element of dramatic interest for audiences who tune in to watch how candidates perform (Hinck & Hinck, 2002; Schroeder, 2000).

FACE AS AN EVALUATIVE CONSTRUCT FOR VIEWING DEBATES

Over the past two decades, political communication scholars have argued that audience members' cognitive schemas play a significant role in how campaign messages are processed (Kendall & Payne, 1995; Lodge & Hamill, 1986; Miller, Wattenberg, & Malanchuk, 1986; Owen, 1991; Popkin, 1991). Politeness might be an important construct that audiences bring to the evaluation of candidates in debates. Douglas (1972) found a set of constructs related to politeness. The subjects of his study on perceptions of political figures "shared common content dimensions in their verbal images of Presidential candidates" (p. 10), two of which were defined as "Blandness," e.g., "Nice guys finish last"; and "Abrasive Credibility," e.g., "He's an s.o.b., but he's our s.o.b." (p. 12). Extending this finding to debates, the implication is that candidates must discover ways of communicating that are neither too bland nor too weak and that are just abrasive enough to be credible.

The problem of determining the appropriate degree of aggression or politeness is critical to a successful debate performance. Henry Cabot Lodge "advised Nixon [in 1960] to take the high road and 'erase the assassin image' that had dogged him throughout his political career" (Schroeder, 2000, p. 7; see also White, 1962). Nixon miscalculated the tone and degree of cooperation to use in the first 1960 debate, resulting in a posture of conciliation and deference to Kennedy (Schroeder, 2000). To add to this complexity, the appropriate degree of face-threatening or face-saving qualities at any given moment in a debate is difficult to describe apart from some kind of comparison of how the candidates interact in the debate. Vancil and Pendell (1984) found that "some viewers evidently are inclined to perceive these debates primarily as a dramatic confrontation of the candidates' personal qualities, and the 'winner' of the debate may be the candidate who manifests superior Presidential qualities" (p. 68).

The notion of a "presidential quality" in Vancil and Pendell's (1984) study seems related to face management in that how a candidate balances cooperation and competitiveness is perceived as a kind of skill. Some evidence suggests that audiences relate this skill to fitness for office. Miller, Wattenberg, and Malanchuk (1986) concluded that personality-centered evaluations of candidates "actually concentrate on instrumental concerns about the manner in which a candidate would conduct governmental affairs" (p. 536). Focus group research on the 1992 debates offered some support for the claim that audiences attend to politeness skills and perceive them to be important considerations in evaluating the candidates. Mayer and Carlin (1994) found that demeanor was important enough for some voters to justify viewing the debates even if new information on the issues was not obtained, and Apker and Voss (1994) described voters who believed that the immediate presence of the audience in the Richmond format "harnessed" the attacks of the candidates (p. 195). Admittedly, although these studies did not employ politeness theory, demeanor on its face seems closely linked to face management concerns. Thus, to a limited extent, some research has suggested that how candidates have attacked the face of their opponents has been relevant in audience judgments of presidential qualities.

ASSESSING POLITENESS STRATEGIES IN RELATION TO ADVOCACY

Assessing the impact of the debates solely in terms of their content as arguments seems problematic on a number of grounds. Some research indicates that audience members may not track the argumentative content of the debate consistently, may bring different interests and informational needs to debate watching, and may judge the candidates on the basis of the relationships they see constructed in the debates. After the 1960 debates, Katz and Feldman (1962) indicated that the "attention-span of the audience is an important factor to reckon with" (p. 191). More specifically, Lubell (1962) noted:

Comprehension of complex issues is never easily achieved through any media, let alone through an exchange of verbal punches. The essential difficulty ... is not a lack of intelligence on the part of the public. Much of the electorate ... is not accustomed to following campaign arguments in detail. When people try to do so they find that they do not have at hand the mental frame of reference that is needed to organize the disconnected "facts" or arguments that get flung about in a debate. (p. 153).

Vancil and Pendell (1984) found no relationship between advocacy skills and perceptions of "winning" a debate. Jacoby, Troutman, and Whittler (1986) found that respondents miscomprehended nearly one fourth of the material in the 1980 debate between Reagan and Carter. Just, Crigler, and Wallach (1990) found that information from debates was recalled less accurately than political ads. Thus, the complexity of the debates complicates easy generalizations regarding what audience members get out of watching them.

While several studies have found that learning occurs after watching debates (Abramowitz, 1978; Becker, Sobowale, Cobbey, & Eyal...