Volume 51, Issue 2

What is the subject of German linguistics? This seemingly simple question has no obvious answer. In the ZGL’s first issue, the editors required contributions to cover the whole of the German language and to be theoretically sound but application-orientated, whereas the current ZGL-homepage defines the German language of present and history in all its differentiations as its subject matter. Looking through the fifty volumes of ZGL, three relationships can be identified as presumably enlightening the role of language, in particular the German language: language and mind; language and language use; language and culture. Though of a different systematic type, language and data should be added as an increasingly important pairing for conceptualizing language. On this basis, I also discuss the position of linguistic studies of the German language, mirrored in the ZGL-volumes, between social, cultural and natural sciences, as well as the corresponding epistemic approaches – like explaining vs. understanding.

The article is devoted to a description of the social-political and scientific-historical conditions before and during the founding of the “Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik” and their consequences for the journal. The influence of politics, contemporary history and the history of science on scientific behaviour becomes clear. What promoted the need for such a journal? What demands did it make of itself? What forms of presentation did it find and what topics did it devote itself to? It becomes apparent that ZGL is still a very suitable place to be up to date with current linguistics, i. e. to inform oneself about topics, to deal with them in a constrictive manner and to get to know research areas and representatives of the subject. An overview of the diversity of the subject and the tendencies of its development is made possible. This is the merit of the journal. However, it does not fulfil its self-obligation to the same extent in all areas (e. g. text linguistics, stylistics, discourse linguistics). It was surprising to see that representatives of East German linguistics certainly had a place in the journal. One gets the impression of a certain self-evidence of common discourse.