Field of Focus III - Funded projects Speaking about language(s) and identity(s)

Project leader:

Prof. Dr. Ekkehard Felder (Department of German Studies)

Funding line:

Language, cognition, culture

 

The project “European Sprachkritik Online” (ESO) lays the foundation for a history of European language criticism. With this aim we collect and document practices of (reflexive) language evaluation in European languages and analyse these practises comparatively.

The Term ‘Sprachkritik’ is German in origin; at the same time, critical language reflection is not an exclusively German phenomenon. For this reason we investigate language criticism in Europe using the example of five languages – German, English, French, Italian and Croatian. Beginning with the premise that language indicates individual and collective thought and behavioural patterns, we extrapolate from the practices of language criticism to aspects of identity and mentality within a language culture. Concepts of German Sprachkritik, many of which have no direct translations, such as Sprachnormenkritik (critique of language norms) or Sprachpurismus (roughly language purism), and other forms of language criticism, such as institutions and academies enable us to analyse the way in which language cultures handle social conflicts and cultural challenges. Debates about issues often become debates about wording.

We will present the results on a multilingual and mutlimodal platform. The online-platform offers mono-lingual and comparative entries on the vast spectrum of language reflection and criticism in historical and contemporary Europe.