Abstract
In 2015, just one topic was highly current and predominant in German media and public and private discussions. People were talking about how to handle the arriving of people from war and crisis zones in the Near and Middle East as well as the attempts to fi nd refuge in Germany. On the one hand, the discussion was on the offi cial German refugee politics and, on the other hand, on the private help by a large number of Germans and German organizations, which was marked, in a positive as well as in a negatively ironic way, as welcoming culture in Germany. For the current study I have collected slogans and symbols from the internet, e-papers and public TV in 2015, which express the supportive and opposed opinion about the German welcoming culture in this discourse. A comparative analysis of internet slogans on a political topic and demonstrations in public shows that language tools, if seen independently from the ideological context and political content, are equal. They represent a special linguistic unit, which directly address people. Successful slogans from all political camps are created by particular strategies to reach the right audience. These are mainly: direct address, pathetic or expressive vocabulary, generalizations, use of wrong facts and known patterns of slogans, use of popular citations, idioms and winged words, creative puns and transformations of citations and idioms.
Keywords
Slogan, poster, political discourse, political vocabulary, chunk of language, citation, proverb, Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture)
Becker, J.M. 2001: Semantische Variabilität der russischen politischen Lexik im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Slavistische Beiträge 404. München.
Becker, J.M. 2005: Unwörter und Wörter des Krieges – Politik, Kritik und Wissenschaft. In: M. Alekseenko (hg.), Grani slova. Sbornik naučnych statej k 65-letiju prof. V.M. Mokienko. Moskau, 370–377.
Biermann, K., Haase, M. 2013: Sprachlügen – Unworte und Neusprech von ‚Atomruine‘ bis ‚zeitnah‘.
Dieckmann, W. 1967: Kritische Bemerkungen zum sprachlichen Ost-West-Problem. Zeitschrift für deutsche Sprache 23/2, 136–165.
Dieckmann, W. 1967: Sprache in der Politik. Einführung in die Pragmatik und Semantik der politischen Sprache.
Greiffenhagen, M. 1980: Kampf um Wörter? Politische Begriffe im Meinungsstreit.
Kämper, H., Kilian, J. 2012:Wort – Begriff – Diskurs: deutscher Wortschatz und europäische Semantik. Bremen.
Klein, J. 2005: „Grundwortschatz“ der Demokratie. In: J. Kilian (hg.), Sprache und Politik. Deutsch im demokratischen Staat. Mannheim, 128–140.
Niehr, Th. 2012: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen internationaler Schlagwortforschung. In: H. Kämper, J. Kilian, Wort – Begriff – Diskurs: deutscher Wortschatz und europäische Semantik. Bremen, 241–256.
Panagl, O. (Hg.) 1998: Fahnenwörter der Politik. Kontinuitäten und Brüche. Wien.