German Media Language Abroad

The main objective of the proposed project is the scientific research and documentation of the current German media language abroad using the example of the German minority press in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Accordingly, the subject of the project is decidedly the German press language in a specific multilingual culture. The material basis for this is provided by German as a minority language in the CEE states of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Kazakhstan, or more precisely: the written language of the German minority in the field of communication 'press'. The selection of these priority countries can be explained above all by the fact that they still have a German-language minority press landscape to a considerable extent. In the above framework of thought and argumentation, a contribution is to be made to a linguistic survey of this linguistic-cultural realm of reality with regard to its basic typological structures and constitutive characteristics as well as to a description with regard to its current state of affairs. The aim is thus an empirically founded development of special features of the written language in the medium of the German-language minority press. In addition, journalistic possibilities and forms of action under the special conditions of multilingualism and inter- or transculturality are to be questioned.

Research output: Extensive empirical indexing and description of the language of the contemporary German minority press in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as well as creation of an up-to-date - structured and annotated - online accessible database (with bibliography) on the media language of German minorities. The project will present written language material primarily for linguistic and cultural studies, but also for social, mental and everyday history studies; thus, processes and consequences of linguistic-cultural exchange as well as interrelationships of linguistic-communicative relations will be systematically recorded and documented.

Further Information

More about the project on the website of the Professorship for German Philology (German only)
Press release about the new research project from 2019 "Neues Forschungsprojekt über 'Deutsche Mediensprache im Ausland'" (German only)