Körperliches und sinnhaftes Bezeugen

Abstract

How can Nazi camp experiences be communicated and analysed? For Primo Levi, who was imprisoned in Auschwitz, ›a new language‹ had to be invented as the experiences were too indescribable and unimaginable. Does this pessimism also apply to videotaped oral history interviews? This linguistic study understands these interviews as an interactive genre in which the eyewitnesses reconstruct and represent their experiences in an embodied dimension. With this multimodal grammar of testimony, the study positions itself vis-à-vis the increasingly raised question of whether and to what extent the body should be considered in linguistic fields of work.