Language and Literature 21(3) 311–324 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0963947012444221 lal.sagepub.com Inappropriate inspectors: Impoliteness and over- politeness in Ian Rankin’s and Andrea Camilleri’s crime series Annick Paternoster Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland and University of Leeds, UK Abstract This article explores evaluations of impoliteness and over-politeness in crime novel dialogues, in reference to the Pragmatics of Politeness and the Discursive Model (Locher and Watts, 2005; Watts, 2003, 2005, 2010). Metapragmatic comments, in which dialogue participants evaluate the ongoing communicative behaviour, offer important insights into the values and social norms that make up interaction. Literary dialogues, as opposed to naturally occurring conversations, have the advantage of offering numerous metapragmatic comments. This study examines police investigator dialogues that contain metapragmatic comments of impoliteness and over-politeness, concentrating on two maverick figures, Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh-based John Rebus and Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian Salvo Montalbano, both of whose fractiousness in regards to procedural rules extends to social norms as well. The first part of the analysis looks at impoliteness, confirming the image of the maverick for whom impoliteness is fairly stereotypical. The determining factor is police rank: I find frequent institutional, that is, legitimized, and unchallenged impoliteness by those who are higher in rank. Secondly, I look at instances of over-politeness. The inspector, who readily uses insincere politeness in order to manipulate a suspect or a witness, is sceptical when evaluating politeness in others. By not commenting on impoliteness and through extensive negative evaluations of politeness, the narrator creates a protagonist who has become disenchanted with politeness and uses impoliteness as if it were normal, appropriate behaviour. Keywords Appropriateness, dialogue, impoliteness, inappropriateness, insincerity, metapragmatic comment, over-politeness, politeness, rudeness Corresponding author: Annick Paternoster, Istituto di studi italiani, Università della Svizzera italiana, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland. Email: annick.paternoster@usi.ch 444221LAL 21 3 10.1177/0963947012444221PaternosterLanguage and Literature 2012 Article