The Quintuple Rating Scale of Civility
Dr. Hawraa Jabbar Rahi
University of Kerbala, College of Education for the Humanities, Department of English
Email: hawraa.jabbar@uokerbala.edu.iq
Phone Number: 07852716929
There is always a need to illuminate the way in which civility can be evaluated. Such evaluation can be done via the Quintuple Rating Scale of Civility offered by this article for this purpose. However, it should be noted here that civility in this scale cannot be decisively evaluated unless the quantitative statistical analysis is conducted, but it is presented here to come to a better understanding of the operationality of the approach of this study. Significantly, this evaluation increases the analytic and evaluative power of the approach in general and its model in particular. This scale can live and breathe via civility principles and their pragmatics strategies. Hence, the picture that has been developed so far is developed further in this section.
Importantly, language and civility are not accidentally associated. Contrarily, they are intrinsically interconnected due to the fact that social structures and personal behaviours weave the linguistic fabrics of any phenomena. It is seriously important to note that language is the voice of civility and its golden means. At its core, civility is a matter of degree, and locating its appropriate degrees requires the balance of its scale of value. In the present study, civility is approached and treated as a continuum in terms of its rating scale of values. To form a standard system for measuring and grading civility, the present study suggests a close-ended scale; namely, Quintuple Rating Scale of Civility. In this scale, civility is evaluated in terms of a vertical rating that goes from the most civil to the most uncivil evaluation of any dialogic exchanges, as indicated by the plus and minus signs respectively.
This scale offers the exact value of civility that makes a particular degree of civility seems appropriate in a given dialogic exchange and in a particular social setting. The rating scale of civility is a bidirectional and bipolar scale where one pole is civil and the other is not. In practice, maxi civility is used to describe the dialogic interaction that is oriented towards the positive end of the scale, and zero civility is used to describe the dialogic interaction that is oriented towards the negative end of the scale. Hence, utterances are coded on Quintuple Rating Scale of Civility in the following way:
Maximum Civility is the highest level of civility that stands for the highest positive rating in the scale where utterances are described as very civil.
Intermediate Civility is lesser than maxi civility and greater than mini civility.
Minimum Dialogic Civility signifies the low rating of civility in the scale.
Neutral Dialogic Civility is neither civil nor uncivil and it does not help or support either side on the rating scale.
Zero Dialogic Civility or incivility can be an indication of the total absence of civility and the least degree in the scale where utterances are described as uncivil.
