No abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a unique global experience, arousing both exclusionary nationalistic and inclusionary responses of solidarity. This article aims to explore the discursive and linguistic means by which the COVID-19 pandemic, as a macro-event, has been translated into local micro-events. The analysis studies the global pandemic through the initial statements of 29 leading political actors across four continents. The aim is to examine discursive constructions of solidarity and nationalism through the social representation of inclusion/exclusion of in-, out-, and affiliated groups. The comparative analysis is based on the theoretical and methodological framework of the socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis and is informed by argumentation theory and nationalism studies. The results of our analysis suggest that leaders have constructed the virus as the main outgroup through the metaphors of the pandemic-as-war and the pandemic-as-movement which have entered the national space. Faced with this threat, these speeches have discursively constructed the nation-as-a-team as the main in-group and prioritized (1) a vertical type of solidarity based on nationhood and according to governmental plans; (2) exclusionary solidarity against rule-breakers; (3) horizontal solidarity that is both intergenerational and among family members, and (4) transnational solidarity. It is not by chance that the world stands as a relevant affiliated group that needs to forcibly collaborate in order to face the main outgroup, the virus itself. A major consensus has been found in constructing the out-group. In contrast, the linguistic and discursive constructions of in-groups and their affiliates display a greater variation, depending upon the prevalent discursive practices and social context within different countries.

This paper discusses the role of metonymy, especially place-for-people, in current constructions of national identity. The corpus consists of ten political speeches (commemoration and election speeches) from Germany, Montenegro and North Macedonia used to detect and examine different levels of variation: from text type to cross-linguistic differences in the use of metonymies. The analysis showed that the most frequent metonym in two Western Balkan countries is the country name, referring to both the speaker as representative of an institution, and population. By contrast, the country name is rarely used in German speeches due to particular communicative and cultural factors. At the pragmatic level, metonymies perform a number of functions, such as legitimization, collectivization and evaluation. Moreover, they are used also as euphemisms and argumentation topos.

The present chapter examines the semiotic transformation of the cognitive model nation as communicated and discursively constructed in commemorative and jubilee speeches concerning the wider context of the 20th Anniversary of Independence in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Theoretically, it draws on the socio-cognitive approach to collective identity and cognitive pragmatics. The methodological framework is based both on quantitative (using corpus linguistics tools) and qualitative analysis. We focused especially on the use of the metonymy “Macedonia”, which is the most frequent term in analysed speeches. Polysemous referentiality and accompanied semiotic events induce, from the point of view of cognitive pragmatics, great contextual effects of this metonymy. Furthermore, ethnonyms, syntactic structures and argumentation patterns are analysed in order to test the hypothesis of discursively erased distinction between different ethnic groups. Finally, the analysis considers possible differentiations caused by participants involved in practices around text, i.e. political figures delivering jubilee speeches.

Der vorliegende Band, im Umfang kompakt, dennoch inhaltsreich, soll als eine erste Annäherung an den Themenkomplex um Standardsprache und Variation des Deutschen dienen. Die Zielgruppe sind laut Autor*innen Studierende der germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft wie auch Schüler*innen in der gymnasialen Oberstufe. Dem Reihentitel nach ("7 wichtige Punkte für einen erfolgreichen Start ins Thema") werden die einzelnen Themen in sieben Kapiteln behandelt, gefolgt vom Literaturverzeichnis und einem Register. Das erste Kapitel leitet das Thema mit einer einfach formulierten, dennoch komplexen Frage ein: Was ist Standardsprache? Entsprechend der einfachen Formulierung erwartet man auch eine möglichst klare Definition als Antwort. Die Antwort bzw. der Versuch einer Definition (vgl. S. 9) offenbart bereits die gesamte Komplexität des Themas. Zum einen stellt sich hier die Aufgabe, konstitutive Elemente einer Standardsprache zu benennen (Medialität, Kontext, Gebrauch, Akteur*innen), zum anderen die Abgrenzung zu anderen Sprachformen vorzunehmen, die Teil einer jeden Sprache sind, wie etwa Dialekte, allgemeingültig und möglichst wertfrei erläutern. Des Weiteren steigt die Komplexität insofern, als dass gleich in diesem Kapitel die Existenz eines Standards in Frage gestellt wird, zumindest wenn es um die gesprochene Sprache geht (vgl. S. 10). Im ersten Kapitel werden weitere Aspekte dieses Themenkomplexes angerissen: Betrachtung des Sprachgebrauchs als ein bestimmtes Handlungsmuster, Bedeutung von kommunikativen Routinen und Normen für die erfolgreiche Kommunikation, Methoden der Erforschung von verschiedenen sprachlichen Ausprägungen sowie Werke wie Grammatiken und Wörterbücher, in welchen