LEARNING OUTCOMES

After a successful participation students will have a good command of the different language varieties of contemporary German language

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

- target of the course is to familiarize students with general knowledge about  language variation and recent tendencies of contemporary German language.

- a further target of the course is a more profound study of some essential language varieties such as national standard varieties, diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic varieties, youth speech and other special languages used in German speaking areas.

- target of the course is furthermore to familiarize students with lexical phenomena such as controversial, incriminated, obsolete and innovative lexemes and teach them how to analyze semantic aspects of words in a critical approach.

- After a successful participation students will have a good command of the different language varieties of contemporary German language

- Having participated successfully in the course students will be able to operate identification, classification and analysis of synchronic linguistic varieties of recent German.

- After the participation students will be able to cope with critical analyses of any kind of specific lexicon applying language corpora in the web.

- Aim of the class is to familiarize students with the most important methods of corpus linguistics used to investigate on lexis and grammatical structure of contemporary German language.

PREREQUISITES

Language level B2 in German language is required for participation.

TEACHING METHODS

The theory lecture (German Linguistics, 36 two hours teaching units) starts in February 2024.

 

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

In the class students will familiarize with fundamental knowledge about national, diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic variaties of German language, as well as about the influence of contact languages and discrepancies between colloquial speech and German standard language in the recent tendencies of present German language. Furthermore there will be put a focus on the phenomenon of individual and social multilingualism.

In the second part of the class students will familiarize with knowledge about different lexical phenomena of the German language such as lexemes that are “explosive” for political, social or cultural reasons, politically incorrect words, words that are “spoiled” because of historical semantic connotations, obsolete, outmoded or extinct words, as well as new, innovative, creative and trendy neologisms and occasionalisms. In the lectures the use of linguistic corpora for semantic and statistic studies will be introduced in order to research the collocations and frequency of the analyzed lexicon. Furthermore, there will be put a focus on the influence of contact languages and discrepancies between colloquial speech and German standard language and on the phenomenon of ideological language and its characteristics.

The program of the exams is valid according to the study regulations until February 2025. Tha program is valid as well for students that will not attend class lessons. Bibliographical informations and other material will be published in Aulaweb.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Ammon, Ulrich: Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1995
• Andresen, Melanie / Zinsmeister, Heike: Korpuslinguistik, Tübingen: Narr, 2019.
• Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung/ Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften (Hg.): Vielfalt und Einheit der deutschen Sprache. Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 2017.
• Elsen, Hilke: Neologismen. Ein Studienbuch. Tübingen: Narr, 2022.
• ·Heine, Matthias: Kaputte Wörter?: Vom Umgang mit heikler Sprache (Duden - Sachbuch), Duden-Verlag 2022.
• ·Heine, Matthias: Verbrannte Wörter: Wo wir noch reden wie die Nazis – und wo nicht (Duden - Sachbuch), Duden-Verlag 2019.
• Keller, Rudi: Sprachwandel. Von der unsichtbaren Hand der Sprache, Tübingen: Francke/UTB 2016
• Mrozek, Bodo: Lexikon der bedrohten Wörter 1+2, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2008.
• Sinner, Carsten: Varietätenlinguistik. Eine Einführung, Tübingen: Narr, 2014.
• Strauß, Gerhard / Harras, Gisela / Haß, Ulrike: Brisante Wörter von Agitation bis Zeitgeist: Ein Lexikon zum öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch, Schriften des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache, 2, Band 2 (1989), Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
• Wandruschka, Mario: Die Mehrsprachigkeit des Menschen. München: dtv, 1981.

"www.polyphonie.at"

Further bibliographical and didactic material will be provided during the semester (Aulaweb).