Linguistik – Impulse & Tendenzen

How are extremist ideologies constructed in texts and conveyed in a potentially persuasive manner? This volume responds to this question by looking at German-language magazines published by the "Islamic State." It examines various linguistic dimensions of these propaganda texts, focusing on the linguistic construction of worldview and self-image, as well as their text-specific potential for identification.

Construction grammar is usually associated with idiomaticity, the lexico-grammatical continuum, and networks of constructions. What has so far been overlooked is that constructions are based on patterns and that linguistic activity operates via patterns of construction. This volume discusses issues relating to the form-function relationship as well as aspects of the analysis, acquisition, mediation, and interlingual comparison of constructions.

Using a corpus of federal press conferences held by German governments (1990 to 2018), this volume examines the use of modal verbs to see whether and how they influence persuasive argumentation in the opening statements made by speakers and in the processual, interactive process of interpreting political propositions in journalistic discussions. It also investigates how modal verbs – vice versa – help to make performances more persuasive.

In medical interactions, there are often different perspectives on what is "normal": While illness is generally an "abnormal" situation for patients, there are courses of illness and symptoms that seem "normal" to medical practitioners. This conversation analysis volume asks how and in which contexts "normalities" are communicatively constructed and which functions "practices of normalizing" play in them.

Text comprehension is a dynamic process in which readers enter into a dialogue with the text and interact with it: one’s own knowledge is activated and the text is interpreted in its cultural and social context. The study of this process requires an interdisciplinary research program for linguistics and didactics, for which this volume provides theoretical considerations, text-type-specific models of analysis, and recommendations.

In this volume, researchers in German linguistics examine remotivation processes in German in the fields of morphology, word formation, phraseology, and pragmatics, and discuss their theoretical classification within the framework of grammaticalization and lexicalization processes and their counter-processes.

Sign languages, as non-written minority languages, do not have a script to use, which is why deaf writers use the script of the surrounding spoken language. Their texts may therefore have linguistic features that suggest an interaction of the different modalities in the writing process. This study aims to make these interactions visible and accessible for schooling.

This volume looks at the linguistic and cultural impact that Phoenician-Punic, the northwest Semitic language of ancient Carthage, had on Pre-Germanic and Early Proto-Germanic. Firstly, it addresses structural and lexical similarities, going beyond what has been known so far. It also focuses on the question of power relations in language contact with the Semitic language.

The object of study in this edited volume is semi-schematic phrasemes, which are known in German construction grammar research by the term "phraseme constructions." Ten contributions by internationally renowned authors from the fields of construction grammar carry out a corpus-based study of various German phraseme constructions, contrasting them with five other European languages.

The premise that aspects of language can be culturally constructive is central to cultural linguistics and is also widespread in neighboring linguistic research fields. But what exactly does this mean? The chapters in this volume answer this question a) purely theoretically and b) by analyzing empirical examples – in relation to linguistic units that can have cultural effect and elements of culture that can be effected by language.

By taking a conversation-analytical approach, this study uses mobile eye tracking and audiovisual recordings of theater rehearsals to examine how people who are interacting with each other simultaneously coordinate relevant activities. Of special significance is the structural compatibility of the modes of participation in the co-relevant activities, as different methods of coordination are used depending on the degree of (in-)compatibility.

Construction semantics combines usage-based construction grammar and frame semantics, as set out in the FrameNet project. This volume models the semantic properties of grammatical constructions and their instances by utilizing frames. It demonstrates the usability of this approach for the constructicographical documentation of constructions as well as its empirical application by looking at three German reflexive constructions.

Protests are considered to be one of the essential cornerstones of democratic societies, because they are where social and cultural pluralism is constantly being renegotiated and alternative political fields of action are opened up. This volume maps out the current state of the linguistic research into protests, which assumes that protests first and foremost constitute linguistic practices of media and historical protest communication.

Punctuation research has undergone a dynamic development in recent years, which this volume demonstrates, portraying comparative punctuation research as its own field. Focusing on system, norm, usage, and acquisition, the contributions address punctuation comparatively and across a range of languages, taking synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

This volume brings together the latest empirical research on the connections between grammatical gender, natural gender, and the social category of gender. This trio operates on various levels: lexically and semantically, morphologically, syntactically, pragmatically, and in texts and discourse. These categories prove to be deeply entrenched within the German lexis and grammar. They reflect old orders of gender but also how they have transformed.

This book provides a comprehensive and innovative exploration of the heterogenous field of linguistic evolution. The introductory sections discuss its subject-specific and methodological foundations. The main focus is the development and application of (meta)scientific methods for the systematic reception of the interdisciplinary research landscape. This volume analyses the methodology, theory and empiricism of various disciplines and fields.

This comprehensive analysis describes the semantic, pragmatic and grammatical properties of the non-canonical and non-standard linguistic focus marker ‘so’. This study answers questions from diverse linguistic fields by combining empirical methods: is the focus marker a register-bound element? To which extent? And how does our language processing apparatus deal with phenomena of variation like this?

This book examines sociosituative writing variations in light of the way that digital media has diversified everyday communicative life. In a nexus of sociolinguistics, grapholinguistics and online linguistic research, this volume develops a research approach for the analysis of digital writing that can be applied in structural-linguistic and ethnographic examinations of youth textuality, between school and WhatsApp.

Transitive verbs can often leave their arguments implicit. Until now, the objectless variants of these verbs have been frequently associated with specific meanings. This volume demonstrates that most verbs have different interpretations with different valency frames and specific conditions for omission. Accordingly, statements about omission and their semantic consequences must be applied to the interpretations of a verb.

Graphics and diagrams are important in linguistics: they visualise analytical findings, illustrate theoretical concepts and make it possible to analyse data in the first place. But how do they influence the generation of insights? What impact do they have on linguistic data? This book examines diagrammatical practices in linguistics and develops a methodology of visual linguistics.

Light verb constructions have a long tradition in German studies research. This volume examines this topic by asking open questions and discusses research findings that have become possible thanks to modern corpus-linguistic tools. The chapters shine new light on light verb constructions, both in a theoretical, descriptive regard, and for applied fields such as second language pedagogy and lexicography.

Names are accorded special linguistic status in many respects. Names of persons are imbued with particular animacy, must be distinguishable as specific signs, and need protection from inflection. The papers in this volume examine this special status at all levels of language based on data. A focus is placed on processes of (de-)onymization, onymic (de-)inflection, creative word formations, and on aspects of the pragmatics of names.

Starting from the smallest elements of the graphical inventory (grapheme variants, punctuation, and pictographs), this book offers differentiated models of digital literacy in various communication contexts. In dialogue between the linguistics of writing and sociolinguistics, it investigates how graphical registers crystallize out of writing variations, digitally conveyed interaction, and metalinguistic reflection.

The study investigates adverbial structures in spoken French that combine three or more discursive elements in a complex way. These structures are modeled in accordance with the terms of construction grammar as “macro constructions.” Drawing upon an extensive corpus, this study analyzes them with regard to their local emergence in interaction and their sedimentation.

This empirical study examines the importance of dialect and dialect use in Switzerland. Based on interdisciplinary approaches, it explores the extent to which linguistic perception and assessment on the part of laypersons is connected to actual language use. It shows that dialects are constructed by means of discursive processes and reproduced in language use. In this way, it illuminates how speakers create dialects.

The study uses linguistic classifications of comparisons and metaphors to examine the structural, conceptual, and functional specifics of Nazi comparisons and metaphors. Drawing on statements in the world of public communications and a comprehensive corpus analysis, the author reveals the quality of such analogies and situates them among various expressions of anti-Semitism.

Dialectology studies boundaries and isoglosses along with the demarcation between dialects. Here, natural and legal boundaries each play a part. The volume combines several strands of research on the theme “Language and Boundaries.” It focuses especially on four thematic areas: dialect geography, language dynamics, language contact, and multilingualism, along with perceptual dialectology.

The thesis of this study is that the prepositions of prepositional objects are not devoid of meaning, but rather occupy significative-semantic niches (semantic roles). The prepositional area is substantively structured through these corpus-based, acquired prepositional niches, thereby differentiating prepositional objects from adjuncts. In terms of grammatical theory, the study thus integrates valence theory and construction grammar.

Based on German corpus data, this study presents the structure and the formal and functional conditions of the rhetorical figure of litotes. By examining the form of double negation (“not without controversy”, “not insoluble”) the analysis exposes the pragmatic mechanisms of “negating the opposite“ and reformulates the relationship between the semantics and pragmatics of litotes.

This study uses dense corpora to analyze the process of first language acquisition of German. It focuses on the development of multi-word statements that are produced as the first creative expressions. Using the “traceback method,” these statements are tracked in the form of building blocks. In this way, the study demonstrates the significance and growth of lexically specific schemata in the phase of multi-word statements.

The study is a theoretical and empirical investigation of the principles behind the selection of different phorical forms. Using a corpus created by the author, it shows how the cognitive activity grade of the referents serve to determine this formal selection. By means of these novel corpus linguistic methods, it is possible for the first time to provide a detailed, tangible example of the effects of these principles in authentic text data.

The study analyzes dialect changes in the former lower East Frankish border areas based on voice recordings from five corpora during the period from 1930 to 2014. Using an "apparent-time comparison" (with data from three age-groups) it also examines whether Itzgründisch speakers still perceive a mental boundary along the former political borders or if the region is perceived as homogeneous.

The book drafts a blueprint for a language-usage based (activity-related) construction grammar of German sentences with simple (non-complex) predicates, including word order and inheritances such as passive, medialization, and nominalization. The theoretical model is based on the Lakoff-Goldberg school of construction grammar (Berkeley Cognitive Construction Grammar).

Personal names are a critical factor in establishing the division into two genders. The essays in this volume examine the gender impact of personal names from linguistic-onomastic, sociological, and historical viewpoints. They investigate, among others, informal names in close relationships, the naming of the unborn, renaming transsexuals, and German, Dutch, and Swedish unisex names.

Studies in pragmatic linguistics that are entirely abstracted from the cognitive dimension lose sight of central aspects in their field of inquiry. This volume presents basic theoretical and empirical studies on topics that demand a linguistic approach that is simultaneously pragmatic and cognitive, thus furnishing a basis for consilience between pragmatic and cognitive perspectives on language.

This study empirically investigates the complexities behind the meaning and use of slur terms. It proposes a semantic analysis model for different types of slurs and explains various modes of use, such as banter, appropriation, and hate speech.

This study presents contact linguistics research on German-Bohemian settlements. It describes linguistic characteristics on the basis of idiolectic representations, manifestations of language contact, and the specific phenomena of multilingualism. The author reviews the stages of language retention and language death at each location. A supplement with language data provides a basis for further research.

An abstract juxtaposition of two intentional verbs, their internal directedness at the other, and the external relation between them become the framework conditions for the semantic substance that creates the German modal verbs. This study proposes the “modal scenario” as a model to describe the meaning of will, should, must, etc., and verifies it using extensive corpus data.

Im Rahmen neuroonkologischer Gespräche dient das MRT-Gerät den Ärzten als primäre diagnostische Grundlage, da es bei diesem Krankheitstyp keine einheitlichen Symptome gibt und der direkte Blick auf die ursächliche Läsion versperrt ist. Fokus dieser gesprächslinguistischen Studie ist die analytische Erfassung des für diese Gespräche konstitutiven Moments der Unsicherheit, welches u.a. durch die ständige Anwesenheit von technischen Apparaten evoziert wird.

Grundlage der Analyse sind über 140 Arzt-Patient-Gespräche, aufgenommen in der neuroonkologischen Ambulanz eines Uniklinikums. Bei der Auswertung des Datenkorpus werden Latours Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie, Clarkes Situationsanlyse sowie Flecks Denkstilkonzept gesprächsanalytisch genutzt. Entsprechend werden die beteiligten situativen und diskursiven Akteure als gleichrangig handelnde Partner betrachtet.

Die Untersuchung zeigt, wie trotz der vorliegenden Unsicherheiten Vertrauen aufgebaut werden kann. Denn obwohl der Arzt Entscheidungen auf Basis von unsicherem Wissen treffen muss, vermag er durch seine erfahrungs- und denkstilbasierte Analyse des Netzwerkes die Situation und das apparativ gewonnene Wissen partiell zu sichern.

Using the methodology of modality-specific enhanced conversational analysis, this study examines how a TV cooking show imparts a social reality within the genre of mass-media infotainment. The study focuses on the verbal and physical-visual procedures used by the interacting parties to carry out the constitutive conversational activities of "informing," "educating," and "evaluating" in a genre-specific manner.

Interpersonal relations shape our language and our language usage, and language, in turn, shapes our relationships. This volume compiles different ways of approaching linguistic relationality as they emerge from current linguistic research. It contributes to setting an empirical, theoretical, and methodological foundation for the research field of language and interpersonal relationships.

For the first time, this study from the field of interactional linguistics comprehensively describes and explains the structure of self-initiated self-repairs in German. Based on over 2,500 self-repairs from spontaneous audio recordings, it develops a highly predictive model that explains the syntax of self-repairs as the outcome of a struggle between mutually competing factors.

Self-repairs have not been standardized, yet they are systematized in spoken languages. This analysis of 3,015 self-repairs taken from German and Spanish, from language acquisition and German-Spanish speakers, shows linguistic and acquisition-specific characteristics that lend support for some concepts of generative grammar while casting doubt on others.

In writing their comments on online forums, users make use of images, emoticons, and different text colors. So in addition to verbal content, non-verbal and paraverbal codes provide important information to which other users make reference. This book uses the example of Spanish entertainment forums to study how users reciprocally negotiate "face". It analyzes the role of multicodality in the field of linguistic politeness.

This volume is a compilation of essays in linguistics that explore the theme “sentence types and constructions” from different theoretical perspectives. In-depth studies of selected sentence types and/or constructions employ mostly generative and constructionist approaches in a dialogue concerning which analyses are best suited for understanding the phenomena under investigation.

The essays in this volume discuss the theme of German as a second language – an often-explored issue in teaching methodology and educational policy. A number of open questions remain about the learning of grammatical structures and the particularities of second language acquisition compared to learning a first language. This volume reviews recent research findings and their relevance to the teaching of grammar in multilingual settings.

Today’s German frequently uses nominal style, e.g. in scientific language. The occurrence of multiple attributes within a noun group is an especially important element in noun-based sentence structure. This volume illuminates the phenomenon of complex attribution from the perspectives of language history, grammar, typology and functional style.

Unlike sentence linkage, the semantic and syntactical linkage of attributes has never been systematically studied. A common linkage phenomenon as found in academic communication is the junction in attribution. Due to its nominal organization, junction in attribution sometimes has different characteristics than sentence linkage. This volume surveys the field and offers grammatical and cultural theoretical explanations.

This volume aims at analyzing the relationship between the dialogical accomplishment of spoken talk-in-interaction on the one hand and entrenched patterns of linguistic and socio-cultural knowledge (constructions, frames, and communicative genres) on the other. The contributions analyze linguistic patterns in different languages such as English, French, German, and Swedish. Methodologically, they take up the usage-based position that structural and functional aspects of language use need to be studied empirically and "bottom-up": Since grammatical structure arises as the entrenched result of recurrent language use, its study should start with the local organization of natural talk-in-interaction before moving on to more complex and abstract relationships between linguistic structure, linguistic meaning, and socio-cultural activity/event patterns. Furthermore, they argue that Dialogism provides a promising starting point for a usage-based approach to linguistic patterns as both emerging (i.e. constructed in response to the situational circumstances of talk-in-interaction) and emergent (i.e. constructed with regard to symbolic units as parts of socially and culturally shared knowledge).

How can we systematize adpositional spatial relationships across different languages? This book presents and evaluates linguistic and typological approaches at creating a tertium comparationis for a corpus-based description and explanation of adpositional spatial relations in Chinese and German, in which comparative spatial relations play a major role.

Iconicity in sign languages is usually considered a marginal linguistic phenomenon. Using the example of the German sign language (DGS), this book examines if this assumption is justified or merely attributable to the constraints of the auditory medium. The grammar and syntax of DGS suggest that iconicity is at least as important as arbitrariness, which is why the former should be reflected more strongly in linguistic theory.

How does the Thai language manage textual structure without a system of articles, finite verb forms, or conjunctions, whereas in German, these are virtually indispensable? Using a theoretical approach and based on detailed textual analyses, this study describes two functionally equivalent patterns of information structure (covert and overt) that interact in a constitutive way with their respective sentence and text grammar coding systems.

Repeatedly, scholars have demanded that language, due to its materiality and performativity, be understood as a medium. Along these lines, this book provides a systematic foundation of a media theory of communication, which envisions language as cultural practice of understanding. From this, a new, linguistically oriented way of cultural studies originates, which revolves around questions of aesthetics, diversity and cultural memory.

The graphic design of texts has become a linguistic object in its own right. To date, however, it has rarely been considered from a sociolinguistic perspective. The present volume attempts to fill this gap by offering the first comprehensive sociolinguistic theory of visual communication. It shows how “meaning” is generated through graphic variation, based on collective communicative knowledge and social attribution processes.

The term “modality” encompasses a number of categories: modal verbs, modal particles, and confirmatory questions. This volume examines, on the one hand, the common features of basic modal and epistemic versions of modal verbs, and, on the other, modal particles. What level of certainty do words of this kind communicate to the listener? This is the key question posed by the work.

This book establishes new criteria for defining the German linguistic landscape. The spatio-structural analyses result in a data-driven model of historical dialects that contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of language. By linking the analysis to extra-linguistic factors, it also serves as a structural bridge for cultural scholars working in other disciplines.

This study posits and pursues a new theoretical and methodological approach – “cognitive regional language research” – based on a paradigm that systematically links panchronic studies (particularly in the subfields of variation linguistics and historical linguistics) to cognitive linguistics. The specific subject of research is syntactic and semantic variation in the use of the verbs “kriegen” (to get) and “bekommen” (to obtain).

In modern linguistics, ellipsis has been a subject of interest in various subdisciplines, including grammar research, psycholinguistics, and language philosophy. This compendium relates these “old” perspectives to each other while also opening up new perspectives – for example, in interactional linguistics and computer linguistics. As a result, this volume not only provides insights into the current status of research about ellipsis, but also highlights novel directions for future investigation.

Children’s language acquisition has not been previously studied in relation to regional language variation. For the first time, this study examines the connections between language acquisition and language variation. The book’s analysis of the Moselle-Franconian dialect based on data collected from children between three and ten years of age reveals both monolingual and bilingual patterns of acquisition. These findings enable the reader to understand changes in language during early phases of acquisition caused by regional language variation.

This study draws on the theory and methodology of interactional linguistics to examine the effects of multilingualism on the syntax and prosody of young Germans of Turkish extraction in everyday conversation. The study concludes that prosodic categories such as rhythm and intonation are influential substrate elements. Yet the influence of Turkish is not one of mere transfer. New, rule-based forms have arisen that serve as resources for specific tasks in conversation.

While linguistics traditionally focused on a language use oriented towards the written norm, this book emphasizes the interactional use of language. On a theoretical and empirical basis, the author develops linguistic concepts to analyze both spoken and written interactional language.

Terms and terminologies are central topics of terminology research, yet strategies of terminologization - that is, the introduction of terminological systems to specialized texts - have received scant attention to date. Using examples from DIN 2330 and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, this study examines the quantitative aspects of terminologization. The findings of this new approach can be applied to other texts, whether of a prescriptive and appellative or descriptive and discursive nature.

Studying parts of speech always demands definition of the criteria for their determination. Non-inflecting parts of speech are of special interest here, because their form provides little information about which part of speech they constitute. Thus non-inflecting parts of speech require criteria not based on morphology. The articles in this collection approach the classification issue from varying perspectives, applying construction grammar, descriptive linguistics, formal linguistics, and generative linguistics.

In German, composition is an especially productive pattern of word formation. This volume fills a gap in scholarship by providing a comprehensive description and discussion of composition in German in the context of current research. Special attention is devoted to current issues and opportunities for methodological investigation.

This collection of essays on gender linguistics presents various perspectives on practices of linguistic construction of gender identity. The articles describe current methodological and theoretical approaches to analyzing the relationship between language and gender, discuss current issues, and sketch out new perspectives on linguistic gender construction in media contexts, in face-to-face interactions, and in the interplay of language systems and usage.

This volume considers, from both theoretical and empirical standpoints, how pragmatic phenomena can be investigated using corpus linguistics. It includes individual contributions based in the study of German, English and Romance language and literature. They discuss corpus pragmatic procedures, results and infrastructures from research relating to Critical Discourse Analysis, Foucault’s linguistics of discourse, research on speech acts, computer linguistics and historical pragmatics. The result is a comprehensive overview of the present state of debate on corpus linguistics in important areas of today’s pragmatics.

This book discusses the evolutionary conditions leading to the emergence of key skills such as cultural learning, pre-linguistic communication, speech and its acquisition, Theory of Mind, autobiographical memory and access to literacy and numeracy. The contributions present the current position of interdisciplinary debate on development, both of individual humans and of humanity as a whole.

This study propounds the thesis that in language two strategies can be found to produce reference that differ in profundity and character from one language to another: deixis and anaphor. By means of contrastive analysis of two language systems that are far removed from each other phylogenetically, the study shows that the aforementioned reference strategies determine the grammar of the language to a great extent. This is demonstrated on all relevant linguistic levels ‑ on the textual level, on the sentence level and on the word level.

Today, young people write in their leisure time far more than they did 15 years ago. Most often they use the new media to do their writing. This book explores whether the frequent writing of short messages and e-mails and participation in chats and social networks like Facebook have an influence on writing in school. Are there any similarities and relationships between the texts written in school and the private texts? For the first time, based on comprehensive data from Swiss students, this book provides empirical answers to these questions.

We speak not only with our mouths, but also with our hands. And that is not all: this book advances the argument that the gestures which accompany speech are also part of the material to be considered in a grammatical description of German. Using exemplars from the field of syntax, the study demonstrates that gestures can be typologised and semanticised, that constituent structures can be assigned to them which display the quality of recursivity, and that they can function as attributes in nominal groups in spoken language.

This book examines how knowledge is created in key areas of day-to-day practice with the aid of linguistic means. Using examples from medicine, law, teaching/learning interactions and mass media, the book investigates what is displayed interactively as knowledge and/or what is considered to be knowledge. The book is divided into four sections which discuss the following key questions: how is knowledge embedded in the respective situation, how is knowledge brought forth interactively, how do institutions present knowledge effectively and how is knowledge disseminated in the (mass) media?

Perceptual dialectology is concerned with subjective, non-specialist, naïve perspectives of German and the role they play in day-to-day social interaction. What do non-specialists in linguistics think about dialects and their speakers? What cognitive maps do they have of these dialects? What attitudes do they have towards the dialects and their speakers? Do non-specialists in linguistics associate particular features with the dialects or perceive them in a special way? The book contains the latest research findings on this subject.

Processes in which linguistic entities are "weakened" formally and in their meaning (e.g. Kien-Föhre > Kiefer) have been well researched, but "strengthening processes" (e.g. Caribbean hamaca > folk-etymological explanation Hänge-matte) in which linguistic entities are first created have hardly been researched at all. The intention of this volume is to fill this gap by exploring both normal folk-etymologies and more subtle ones. The examples presented include: the interpretation in children's language of heiser as the comparative form of heis - i.e. heis-er, the literal interpretation of expressions (e.g. Gastarbeiter [guest workers] is considered wrong, because guests and work are mutually exclusive) and the attribution of meanings derived from world knowledge to words, which are not contained in the words' literal meaning (see the choices of Germany's annual "Unwort" competition for the "un-word" or "No-No Word of the Year"). Pleonasms (such as Hai-Fisch instead of just Hai) round off the thematic spectrum.

How do ordinary people perceive regional modes of speech? This question is often posed at present within German dialectology, without however having produced a satisfactory answer. As part of an empirical pilot study in Saxony, Saxon-Anhalt, Thuringia and South Brandenburg, the present investigation uses the example of Upper Saxon to examine how the structures of everyday language-related knowledge can be observed and described, to look at the parameters within which this knowledge is organised and to determine the role played by extra-linguistic factors in the perception of dialects.

The terms ‘proximity’ and ‘distance’ signify conceptual characteristics of orality and literacy. In that branch of linguistic research dealing with linguistic variation, ‘proximity vs. distance’ is a central area of enquiry along with fields such as dialectology, languages for specialist purposes or text typology. The present volume examines commonalities and differences along the topic areas of ‘proximity and diatopic variation,’ ‘proximity and diachronic variation,’ ‘proximity and diaphasic variation’ and ‘proximity and grammaticalisation.’

The contributions in this grammar-theoretical volume examine current developmental trends in German under the aspect of changing coding techniques. These tendencies include morpho-syntactical changes in the realization of aspect, tense and mode as well as tendencies to omit the article and the processes resulting from this and also purely syntactic changes like the distance position of pronominal adverbs.

The papers in this volume study linguistic structures in the context of their interactive functions and usages; they concentrate on grammatical constructions for the positioning of self and others. Using empirical analyses of positioning constructions, the authors show that forms and functions of grammatical structures in everyday interactions are closely interwoven with the conditions for the production and reception of spoken language. This leads to the methodological conclusion that linguistic phenomena - understood as constructions of varying complexity - cannot be decontextualised but are to be examined in their particular interactional contexts. In the present analyses, therefore, attention is paid both to the mediality and actional reference of linguistic phenomena and to the dialogicity, sequentiality and temporality of the development of linguistic constructions.

In order to take account of the tension between the stabilisation of grammatical constructions and the process of their actualisation in interactions, the authors combine methods from Interactional Linguistics with insights from usage-based positions of both Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar.

The study is located at the interface of text linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatic stylistics and system theory. It is the first to analyse what is known as the Red Army Faction's "Info" system – the written communication used by the members during their imprisonment between 1973 and 1977 – on the basis of a newly developed system-theoretical approach to describing group stylistic phenomena. Individual analyses of original documents are used to discern the structure of the group style; working from this, sense attributions are formulated.

Within linguistics, discourse linguistics has now become established as a sub-discipline dealing with supratextual meaning relations and historically and culturally based knowledge. A large number of individual studies have been presented and the theoretical discussion is well advanced. What is still lacking, however, is a soundly-based methodology, which is where this volume comes in. The contributors present and discuss various investigative procedures.

The study analyses the linguistic means for expressing pain in German. Based on written and oral data, mainly from conversations between doctors and patients, the study analyses the grammatical constructions (e.g. "Ich habe Schmerzen" [I have pain] or "Mein Bein tut weh" [My leg hurts]) and develops the patterns deployed by patients with chronic pain to describe their pain in discourse. This interdisciplinary study is directed towards linguists, medics and non-experts with an interest in language; it combines methods from grammar, semantics and conversational analysis, and its results are read in the context of medical literature.

This book connects the fundamental theoretical question of the object of linguistic analysis with the topical subject of "media". It is concerned in particular with the concept of competence - if there is no language competence independent of media, to what extent can competence still be regarded as "free"? Following on from Wittgenstein, the author develops the thesis that in many cases it is more appropriate to see linguistic competence as "competence in language games". This model is developed in the principal chapter and illustrated using numerous examples.

The study examines relative clauses in spoken German from an extensive empirical corpus of informal and formal interactions. It provides a comprehensive grammatical analysis of one of the central structural features of German, using consistent oral language data. The analysis of the corpus is marked by its combined use of quantitative and qualitative data, and takes account of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic relationships.

This collected volume is devoted to a comprehensive treatment of the subject of "linguistic brevity." The themes include aspects of language economy, communication theory, shortened words in various European languages, brevity in word-formation and syntax, rhetoric and stylistics, brevity as a principle in giving personal first names. The volume contains contributions by renowned authors and gives overviews of research as well as presenting novel approaches. This hitherto unique volume presents an almost encyclopaedic account illuminating the varying dimensions of a complex area.

The book presents a fundamental study of the coordination of language action in chat communication. It uses numerous examples to present the coordination of activity in chatting as a high-level individual project, and discusses the question of the extent to which analytical and descriptive categories which have proved their worth in conversational analysis can sensibly be adopted for the description of chat-based communication processes. The theoretical findings are lent empirical support by a case study based on multi-modal data of user activities while chatting.

The most important approaches in the current discussion on linguistic discourse analysis according to Foucault are described in this anthology. The volume covers the theory of discourse as an overall text structure and the exemplary subject fields of discourse linguistics.

The book deals with the fundamental question of how language comprehension and situational comprehension interact with one another. Using an oral description of a tour of Potsdam Square in Berlin as an example, the author shows how pointing gestures interact with deictic expressions or pointing words such as "here" or "there", enabling objects to be localized distinctly. The resulting theory on verbal and physical pointing lies within and between the contexts of linguistics, semiotics and gesture studies.

The book offers a detailed account of English influence on German based on a large scale corpus analysis of the newsmagazine ‘Der Spiegel’. The study is structured into three parts covering fundamental questions and as of yet unsolved and disputed issues in the domain of anglicism research and language contact. Part 1 discusses the terminological uncertainty in the field, puts forward a model of the influence of English on German, and proposes a principled classification of the term anglicism. Part 2 portrays the numerical impact of anglicisms in an extensive corpus and draws general conclusions about the overall quantitative influence of English on German. Part 3 conclusively investigates the integration of anglicisms in German across the various lexical and syntactic paradigms. Particular focus is attributed to the salient morphological features of gender, plural, genitive case, and to verbal and adjectival inflection. Furthermore, word formational processes are substantively analyzed including compounding, derivation, and peripheral types of word formation. A functional classification of written codeswitching concludes part 3, and the book closes with a brief outlook on future challenges of anglicism research. In its breadth and detailed manner of analysis, the study sets the current standards of research in the field.

The study examines the function of queries in oral communication. It develops a typology of query forms that can be differentiated depending on the preceding communication and the respective inquiring function. The study shows that, among others, the functions of queries are to help solve comprehension and expectation problems, as well as to store information. In counseling interviews, queries can be found especially at the interface between the presentation of the problem and the development of the solution, and it is here that they take on important functions in conducting conversation. This discourse-linguistic study is based on extensive, empirical language data.

This study examines the regional differences between voice intonations in German, in particular the difference between the urban regional languages of Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Duisburg, Mannheim and Freiburg. The study develops a fundamental methodology for analytically capturing the phenomenon of "intonational variance" and is based on a large, empirically-derived set of data. The study creates a solid foundation for the continuing research and description of intonational systems in German, drawing upon the most modern tools of phonological research. The work includes an audio CD with a large corpus of speech recordings, which imparts a better understanding of all the hypotheses of this pioneering work.

This anthology highlights possible systematic interconnections between the approaches of “construction grammar” and interaction-oriented studies on the grammar of spoken language. The empirical analyses focus on fixed constructions of varying complexity in German and English communicative situations.

Dominance and power are also exercised through semantics. When viewing language as a means for asserting certain views on controversial topics in intellectual domains (e.g. medicine, economics, architecture, natural science, history, law, etc.), quasi disputes arise within debates among professionals with regard to appropriate terminologies and definitions, in other words, "semantic battles" take place. Language directs the constitution of facts within the framework of knowledge; knowledge is developed through language. The contributions in the volume examine the forms and functions of the discourse of professionals in various scientific fields.

Communication in organizations takes place under certain circumstances which demand specific analytical approaches. The current study focuses on the following questions: How can meetings be analyzed in relation to the organization in which they take place? How can the often criticized complexity of such meetings be comprehended? What role do decisions play in their comprehension? A special research perspective on this form of organizational communication is developed based on empirical data, conversation analysis and system theory.

The book presents the first comprehensive empirical study on spoken German and second language acquisition with regard to the demonstratives dieser, diese, dieses and der, die, das. The study is supplemented by an exemplary analysis of usage in textbooks on German as a Foreign Language. Moreover, a project following a multi-perspective approach is introduced, in which language description, language use and language acquisition form the main basis of decisions in foreign language instruction.

The study examines the verbal reference to (static and moving) objects in space. The empirically-founded comparison shows that even closely-related languages/dialects vary quite considerably in this respect. The corresponding language typology is revised and expanded to include the dimension of the verbal differences in or degree of standardization of language varieties, which has previously been ignored.

This work describes the conventionalized possibilities of the gender specification of personal appellation and provides an extensive corpus analysis which elaborates on the intersectionality of gender constructions in Swedish, especially within the context of age and sexuality.

The book describes discourse analysis as a means of examining language as it is used in everyday life. The principles of language theory and the method of procedure are summarized. Grammatical and semantic questions are then used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.

Modern theories of tense define invariant meanings and relate these to variants using a variety of mechanisms. The present theory of tense dispenses with the principle of invariance. The individual meaning variants are derived from original meanings, and in the case of analytical tenses are explained compositionally. After introductory material on the determination of time and on the respective merits of the prototype and the invariance methods, the book contains chapters on aspect in German, on the six traditional tenses and on the structure ‛würde’ + infinitive.

This collection of papers opens a debate on the relationship between processes of grammaticalisation and systems of word-classes. It centers on the question of how diachronic grammaticalization processes and synchronic hierarchies of grammaticality relate to the lexico-grammatical categorization of the word inventory in natural languages (= systems of word-classes). Whereas systems of word-classes are normally only seen as an external system of reference for processes of grammaticalization, the papers in this volume inquire into the grammaticalization of the word-classes themselves (in the language system and in language acquisition).

This study is the first to examine in detail the public and academic discussions (“metalinguistic discourses”) from 1990 to 2001 on the subject of anglicisms in German. The central question is one of why attempts by linguists to participate in the public discourse and move this towards a more objective debate largely failed. On the basis of numerous statements in the media and from professional linguists, the study demonstrates the reasons for the divergent assessments of the phenomenon in academic and public circles.

The central theme of the volume is the language use, communicative behavioral patterns, and media-specific developments in the central areas of language and communication in the Internet. In addition to descriptions, the volume also provides a prospective view into the further development of language and communication in the Internet and is comprehensively supported by the wbsite http://www.mediensprache.net/.

The contributions in this volume examine a representative spectrum of phenomena in the grammaticalization of the German language. At the center of the study is the question concerning the legitimacy of the often hypothetically postulated unidirectionality of grammaticalization cycles. The volume documents the trends in current linguistic research discussions, in which typological, diachronic, and synchronic questions come together.

This work is the first comprehensive analysis of the German orthographic system of writing words together or apart. The study is carried out separately for the system before and after the spelling reform. Comparison of the variants shows that the reformed system is more complex than the old system, and that it also violates the basic principles of the German system of writing words together or apart.

The study investigates the phonetic perception of language sounds. An account of the history of perceptual phonetics and the theoretical position of the subject as a specialist discipline is followed by an experimental study which derives psycho-physiological measures and acoustically evoked potentials and thus supports the assumption that both the general auditory processing mechanism and a special language processor are involved in the perception of sounds.

In this phonetic study, a systematic analysis of intonation from eight German regional varieties is presented for the first time, in which the numerous phonetic forms and their functions in conversation are described. The accompanying CD-ROM includes a collection of excerpts from spoken conversation as well as audio examples, which help illustrate and explain the analysis.

A systematic description of the semantics of connectives is a challenge that linguists have yet to answer. In order to define semantic classes such as "causal", "concessive", "temporal" according to objectivizable criteria, to classify them, and to describe their relationship to one another, it is important to consider the polysemy phenomena of connectives. The interaction with syntactic, information-structural and intonational structure must also be examined. It was the goal of a colloquium at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache [German Language Institute] in December 2002 to present itself with this challenge. Their results are presented collectively in this volume. The contributions all have in common the reference to the Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren [Handbook of German Connectives], which, with its extensive description of the syntax of connectives, offers an up-to-date starting point for a survey of semantics.

The contributions, which interactively refer to one another, are divided into four chapters. In Chapter A, interfaces are described from a grammar-theoretical, syntactic and logical viewpoint and substantiated by way of examples. Chapter B is dedicated to the temporal connectives with a focus on ambiguities (i.e. of the German connectives während, bevor, nachdem) and the establishment of the paradigms that structure the temporal field. In Chapter C, "Contrast Connectives", adversative and concessive connectives and their differentiation from one another and from additive connectives are discussed. This chapter also presents suggestions for a minimalistic, semantic description of ways of reading German aber. Chapter D is dedicated to the causal connectives. In addition to a revision of the causality concept, this chapter mainly includes suggestions for the restructuring of the causal field, for instance, through the introduction of a class mainly based on the indication of inferences.

Using Hamburg as an example, this book shows that the Turkish language is well-established today in Germany's large cities and has become an integral part of everyday communication - not only for citizens of Turkish decent. In fact, teenagers and young adults of German and other heritages are learning Turkish fragmentarily or completely and using it in everyday life. The book examines the process of and social-symbolic motivation for learning Turkish, the structure of the Turkish being acquired, as well as its application in conversation.

Although many everyday texts include pictures that contribute to the meaning of the message as whole, the field of linguistics has only sporadically dealt with this sign modality. The book closes the gaps by presenting theories for justifying possible references between language and pictures, and offers practical explanations for these references by way of numerous examples from journalism and advertising.

Der Band untersucht aus verschiedenen Perspektiven die Genese, Funktionsweise und Wirkung von sprachlich vermittelten gesellschaftlichen Leitbildern. Diese sprachlichen Realisationen von diskursprägenden Denkmustern können linguistisch als Schlüsselwörter oder Metaphern erfasst werden. Die hier vorgelegten Studien untersuchen an einer Fülle von Einzelbeispielen, wie Leitbilder in kompakten, kommunizierbaren und positiv besetzten sprachlichen Formeln verdichtet werden und wie diese Formeln den Bestand an kollektiv geteilten Wert- und Normalitätsvorstellungen festigen und weiterverbreiten. Die allen Beiträgen zugrunde liegende These ist, dass Subjekte die 'objektive' Wirklichkeit durch Versprachlichung, also durch Kommunikation erst 'erschaffen'. Durch die Zusammenführung von Theoremen der Soziologie und der Linguistik erarbeiten die Autoren eine neue Sichtweise im Hinblick auf den Prozess der Leitbildentwicklung und damit des 'Weltentwurfs'. Sie können u. a. zeigen, dass ein gesellschaftliches Leitbild seine größte (unbewusste) Wirkmächtigkeit gerade dann entfaltet, wenn die öffentliche Diskussion über seine Relevanz abgeebbt ist, d.h., wenn sich keine sprachlichen Manifestationen im öffentlichen Diskurs mehr beobachten lassen.

Der Band enthält u. a. Beiträge von Brigitte Aulenbacher, Susan Geideck, Karsten Kassner, Josef Klein, Wolf-Andreas Liebert, Andreas Musolff, Tilla Siegel, Franc Wagner, Petra Wassermann und Martin Wengeler.

Diese Arbeit verknüpft empirische Analysen institutioneller Gespräche mit sprachtheoretischen Fragen. Im Zentrum der Analyse stehen Verfahren, die Interagierende verwenden, um selbst wiederum über Sprache und sprachliche Interaktion zu kommunizieren.

Im theoretischen Teil werden wichtige Entwicklungen im Übergangsbereich zwischen Sprachtheorie und Gesellschaftstheorie übersichtlich und umfassend dargestellt. Dabei wird nachgewiesen, dass die Gesprächsforschung für zentrale gesellschaftliche Prozesse unmittelbar relevant ist. Die Erkenntnisse aus dem Bereich kommunikativer, soziopragmatischer Wirklichkeitserzeugung werden für die praktische Gestaltungsarbeit in Organisationen 'vor Ort' fruchtbar gemacht. Das Problem, vor dem der Berater steht, ist, den in bestimmten Denk- und Einstellungstraditionen sowie Habitualisierungen verharrenden Klienten auf kommunkativem Wege neue Einsichten und Interpretationen und damit neue Handlungs- und Verhaltensmöglichkeiten für seine Alltagspraxis zu vermitteln. Der Autor untersucht mit gesprächsanalytischen Methoden, wie diese Vermittlung anhand sprachreflexiver Thematisierungen und Methoden erfolgt.

Im Mittelpunkt der empirischen Untersuchung stehen folgende Fragen:

• Wie setzen Klienten und Berater Sprache ein, um organisatorische Probleme zu lösen? Auf welche kommunikativen Verfahren greifen Berater zurück, wenn sie die Sichtweisen ihrer Klienten sprachlich beeinflussen wollen?
• Welche organisationalen Sachverhalte werden typischerweise zum Thema? Wie werden diese Sachverhalte formuliert und durch Neuformulierungen semantisch umstrukturiert?
• Welche Chancen bringen diese Verfahren mit sich, worin bestehen Risiken und Grenzen des Vorgehens?

"Writing properly" is the goal of the subject-specific education standards for elementary school education. The paths toward achieving this goal in language education are not only an object of research but also a hot topic on social media. This book examines the narratives and myths about the "decline of writing skills" hidden in public discourse, contrasting them with an academic perspective.

This study examines how the diversity at a German-African worship service is dealt with in the context of ritual and community in order to overcome any potential obstacles to joint religious practice. It reveals which different expectations and preferences collide at a worship service, which aspects of identity become relevant in the process, and how rituals and community-building interact.