The article deals with the construction of the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories in a corpus of You-Tube comments on the compulsory measles vaccination in Germany between March and September 2019. Starting from the assumption that the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories can be seen as a form of vaccine scepticism or lack of trust, the article explores the linguistic aspects of this conspiracy theory using the methods of the topos analysis and discourse-analytical approach to trust. The analysis shows that the language of YouTube comments does not contain elements of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

Diese Untersuchung beschäftigt sich mit den Regierungserklärungen, in denen um die Ratifizierung von EU-Verträgen in Deutschland zwischen 1951 und 2009 geworben wird. Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass in den Regierungserklärungen Vertrauen gegenüber der Europapolitik der Bundesregierung und den Vertragsentwürfen sprachlich konstruiert wird, werden vor dem Hintergrund der diskurslinguistischen Vertrauensforschung Argumentationsmuster, mit denen für die Ratifizierung des Vertrags argumentiert wird sowie argumentative Kontinuitäten und Veränderungen im Verlauf der Untersuchungszeit analysiert.

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This paper investigates personal name compounds (PN compounds) with a personal name in the second position and a lexeme or a proper name as a modifier (cf. Veggie-Renate). Based on 1194 types from the web corpus of the Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS) and Twitter, the paper aims at testing the following hypotheses from the previous studies (Wildgen 1981, Kürschner 2020): PN compounds are infrequent, irregular and bear mainly an evaluative function. By drawing on the semantic relations holding between the components of nominal compounds in German (cf. Ortner et al. 1991), we provide evidence for 15 regular semantic patterns underlying PN compounds. However, these patterns cannot fully account for the properties of PN compounds as the patterns are too abstract and neglect the contextual factors and extra-linguistic knowledge about the name bearer. Therefore, to arrive at the properties of PN compounds, semantic patterns must be pragmatically enriched in the context by taking into account the linguistic knowledge about the modifier, the linguistic context and knowledge about the name bearer that is not included in the semantic pattern. Furthermore, apart from their evaluative function, PN compounds also evoke knowledge about the name bearer’s appearance, function, occupation, origin or participation in a social event. Finally, the analysis indicates a large frequency of PN compounds in DWDS and Twitter compared to the German Reference Corpus (DeReKo).

This paper investigates the concept of trust at the discourse level. Based on an epistemological discourse approach (Busse 1987), trust is defined as trust-relevant knowledge, which is usually implicit. The paper focuses on the methodology of the analysis of trust at discourse level in the mass media reporting on refugees by identifying implicit indicators of trust constructions (trust dimensions) and their discourse linguistic operationalization through argumentation patterns. The manual annotation of trust dimensions and a combination of hermeneutic and automatic analysis using Maxqda play a central role for the operationalization of the concept trust for discourse linguistic analysis. The implementation of the method is demonstrated by analyzing the media construction of the loss and the rebuilding of trust towards refugees (the discursive trust dynamics) in the context of the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany in December 2015/January 2016. In contrast to sociological studies, the present analysis does not show an increased mass media construction of distrust in the face of this discursive event and therefore demonstrates that discourse linguistic trust research contributes to the interdisciplinary research on trust and provides valid findings about the collective knowledge about refugees.