We not only use the words of a language to describe things, but language also influences how we think, feel and act and how we categorise social and cultural issues. This can be seen in current political discussions in Germany, e.g. on the environment, education and migration. In spring 2025, the migration discourse dominates the political debate in Germany - and shows numerous breaks with fundamental norms of political language use (including re-activations from the arsenal of national-socialist and anti-Semitic language use).  In his lecture, Jörg Kilian will give insigts to linguistic research into political vocabulary and word usage. Using examples from political language in Germany, he discusses how linguistic and didactic approaches can be used to analyse and understand how language shapes society.

Jörg Kilian is Professor of German Philology / Didactics of the German Language at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. His research interests include language in politics, didactics of political language, vocabulary didactics, critical semantics, linguistic and didactic language criticism, stereotype research and language history.

Jörg Kilian er professor i tysk filologi/didaktik i det tyske sprog ved Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. Hans forskningsinteresser omfatter sprog i politik, didaktik af politisk sprog, ordforrådsdidaktik, kritisk semantik, lingvistisk og didaktisk sprogkritik, stereotypeforskning og sproghistorie.

We not only use the words of a language to describe things, but language also influences how we think, feel and act and how we categorise social and cultural issues. This can be seen in current political discussions in Germany, e.g. on the environment, education and migration. In spring 2025, the migration discourse dominates the political debate in Germany - and shows numerous breaks with fundamental norms of political language use (including re-activations from the arsenal of national-socialist and anti-Semitic language use).  In his lecture, Jörg Kilian will give insigts to linguistic research into political vocabulary and word usage. Using examples from political language in Germany, he discusses how linguistic and didactic approaches can be used to analyse and understand how language shapes society.

Jörg Kilian is Professor of German Philology / Didactics of the German Language at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. His research interests include language in politics, didactics of political language, vocabulary didactics, critical semantics, linguistic and didactic language criticism, stereotype research and language history.