Volume 2018, Issue 69

The adaptation of Internet memes is an important practice in social media that is an excellent subject of investigation to explain (the instantiation of) multimodal constructions with regard to social-cognitive processes. In this article, we would like to plead for paying more attention to Internet memes as linguistic research object. By using a qualitative-quantitative corpus-pragmatic approach, we worked out the multimodal character of selected constructions being instantiated within adaptations of the so called Merkel-Meme ( n =632). We discuss two constructions, which can only be thought of through the interplay of a pictorial component that shows a gesture and varying linguistic elements. This is on the one hand the construction [[ so * adjektiv ] AdjP + Ausprägungsgrad anzeigende Armgeste] and on the other the construction [[ so * artikel ( adjektiv ) nomen ] NP + Umfang anzeigende Armgeste]. Therefore, it becomes evident that the pictorial component influences the linguistic part of the Internet meme.

The paper addresses the problems learners (L1) have to encounter while deducing word meaning from a given (written) context. The first part presents a theoretical model of context for that purpose. The main parts show the results of two approaches: First, a typical text from a schoolbook is examined to point out the principal potential of a text to deduce the meanings of words unknown to the reader. The second approach presents the results of an empirical study with more than 400 students, who were asked to mark unknown words and helpful context elements in a given text. The results of both approaches point at major and minor strategies of readers when looking for explanations of word meanings. Finally, a typical context seems to be much less helpful than teachers lean on.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the relationship between academic language registers and school success in the German-speaking education system. However, we still know very little about the actual effects that academic language has on the academic performance of students, for instance, in how far the extent to which academic language is used in subject tasks actually makes these tasks more difficult. It is therefore highly vital that any operationalization of difficulty-inducing linguistic features of tasks is made on solid theoretical and empirical grounds. The purpose of this article is thus to present the linguistic foundation used in an interdisciplinary empirical study in which 1.346 7 th and 8 th graders solved a set of subject-oriented tasks from Maths, Physics, German, PE and Music, while the degree of linguistic demands in the tasks was systematically varied. First, the theoretical and empirical research on linguistic difficulty from a range of research discourses is discussed. The findings are merged into a model of linguistic demands. Its operationalization is then illustrated in three linguistically varied versions of the subject-specific tasks. Finally, an outlook on preliminary results of the empirical study is given, which indicate that the categories used in the model actually do produce differences in subject-task difficulty, even though there are a number of effects that need further investigation.

Deaf sign language users oftentimes claim to be able to recognise straight away whether their interlocutors are native signers. To date it is unclear, however, what exactly such judgement calls might be based on. The aim of the research presented was to explore whether specific articulatory features are being associated with signers that have (allegedly) acquired German Sign Language ( Deutsche Gebärdensprache , DGS) as their first language. The study is based on the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data were generated in ten focus group settings. Each group was made up of three participants and one facilitator. Deaf participants’ meta-linguistic claims concerning linguistic features of ‘native signing’ (i. e. what native signing looks like) were qualitatively analysed using grounded theory methods. Quantitative data were generated via a language assessment experiment designed around stimulus material extracted from DGS corpus data. Participants were asked to judge whether or not individual clips extracted from a DGS corpus had been produced by a native signer. Against the backdrop of the findings identified in the focus group data, the stimulus material was subsequently linguistically analysed in order to identify specific linguistic features that might account for some clips to be judged as ‘produced by a native signer’ as opposed to others that were claimed to have been ‘articulated by a non-native signer’. Through juxtaposing meta-linguistic perspectives, the results of a language perception experiment and the linguistic analysis of the stimulus material, the study brings to the fore specific crystallisation points of linguistic and social features indexing linguistic authenticity. The findings break new ground in that they suggest that the face as articulator in general, and micro-prosodic features expressed in the movement of eyes, eyebrows and mouth in particular, play a significant role in the perception of others as (non-)native signers.