In recent years, the “crisis of German studies” has become an increasingly current topic within academic discourse. This SUBJECT, more precisely defined as “legitimation crisis of traditional German studies”, has been long debated in Germany. Legitimation is a common principle in the fields of law, political science, and sociology. It refers to other principles such as ‘legitimity’ and ,justification’. Since the Nineties, the crisis in German literature studies appears to be rather an identity crisis, the origin of which can be seen in the centrifugal forces of attraction of several other disciplinary approaches. Something similar has happened – worldwide – in the field of German linguistics, and even in the branch of German as a Foreign Language teaching practice, due to the progressively increasing habit of providing the GFL-object with attributes specifying its specific purposes, for instance: German for Occupational Purposes, German for Business, German for Medical Purposes, for legal Professionals, Engineers, German for young, adult, senior learners etc. The question of which variety of German should be considered at the university level depends upon several factors, a simple answer is therefore not forthcoming. It is extremely important for the modern field of German studies especially within the “German as a Foreign Languagecountries”, that the object „GFL for humanistic purposes” be clearly defined, at least as a variety within the multiplicity of given alternatives.
In order to describe how “literary reading” proceeds, cognitive poetics makes a distinction within formal signs between “backgrounding elements”, which act as agents of automatic reading, and “foregrounding elements”, which require a more complex process of text elaboration and comprehension of the text meaning. To the first group of background elements belong all familiar words and signs compatible with normal use and expectation. This article aims to show how function words, i.e. ordinary words with limited meaning which seem to be natural candidates to serve as background elements, can express ambiguous relations, thus fulfilling a „poetic function“. The article deals with grammatical means of the German language: personal pronouns, the coordinating conjunction und, the negative particle nicht.
The concept of language decadence can be interpreted in different ways: as mixing of languages, language deterioration, or language loss. As linguists are aware, all these manifestations commonly attributed to so-called language decadence are actually phenomena of language change. The debate on language decadence, while fascinating to public opinion, is based upon an abstract inconsistent view of language as a perfect, immutable instrument, to be used according to precise rules. Nevertheless, it is unavoidable in foreign language instruction to refer to rules and to a manageable model of standard language. The transmission of awareness about language change can avoid the creation of myths about language decadence
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