Argumentation and aggression seem to be contrary to each other. Argumentation should be understood as the regulation of dissent based on rational arguments, whereas aggression can be seen as the manifestation and intensification of dissent. But the boundaries between rationality and irrationality, as well as between the regulation and the manifestation of dissent, are often vague. Therefore, not only hate speech but also seemingly rational argumentation can be motivated by aggression and can lead to aggression. In this lecture, Dr. Kusse will describe forms of aggressive argumentation using examples from the Ukraine conflict, such as aggressive lyrics, political statements, and internet commentaries.
Dr. Holger Kusse (Kuße) is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Slavic Linguistics at Dresden Technical University (TUD) and a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. He obtained his PhD (1997) and habilitation degree (2002) at Goethe University Frankfurt. His main interests are cultural linguistics, pragmalinguistics and historical pragmatics, semantics, theory of argumentation, philosophy of language, and Russian philosophy. Dr. Kusse is the editor-in-chief of the Slavistics journal Zeitschrift für Slawistik published by De Gruyter.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta.