“Die Blumenzeit der Frau”

Abstract

Scientific herbal texts in vernacular German first emerged in the 15th century, and their diachronic analysis presents an opportunity to trace linguistic changes across centuries. This study deals with the linguistic strategies that are used to refer to the concept of menstruation, which we study in the RIDGES corpus, representing herbal texts from the late fifteenth century to the early twentieth century. This exploratory study focuses on terminology, i.e. expressions referring to concepts relevant to scientific communication, and investigates the morphological, syntactic and semiotic characteristics of references to menstruation. Our study reveals two tendencies: a decrease of formal variation as well as a decrease of semiotic variation. Both tendencies point towards the increase of terminologisation in the early and late modern period (1483–1914).