ABSTRACT

The intersection of aggressive communication and culture has long intrigued communication scholars. The particular theoretic tradition examined in this volume focuses on predispositions for symbolic aggression rooted in part on beliefs about argument, making intercultural exchanges a particularly interesting and rich context in which to explore the implications of cultural differences. Clearly, it is differences in beliefs about and predispositions for aggression that require the most attention, as it is these differences that most perplex and aggrieve interactants, thereby begging for explanation. Our ethical grounding in examining cultural implications of aggressive communication is firm. Cultural misunderstandings of aggressive communication may have devastating effects, reverberating from the personal to the global. This social scientific tradition of “communication aggression predispositions” has thus been consistently sound axiologically and praxeologically. Clearly, our moral imperative as social scientists should be to understand these dynamics and to construct explanations that can be applied to prevent and solve pressing practical problems that have dire implications. In short, our hearts remain in the right place. We find in examining this literature, however, pressing ontological and epistemological problems that reflect such difficulties across treatments of culture and communication in the social scientific tradition.