Darstellung der Emotionalität und der DDR-Alltagskultur im Film ,Good Bye, Lenin!ʻ und in seinen Adaptationen

Abstract

This article examines the depiction of emotionality and the everyday GDR culture in the renowned German tragicomedy ʽGood Bye, Lenin!ʼ (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker, which won numerous awards both nationally and internationally, and its comparation in three different forms of the film: the screen play by Bernd Lichtenberg (2003), a book adaptation in plain language by Eva Dix (2015), and a version adapted for people with visual impairment, supplemented by audio descriptions. We investigate how emotionality is manifested linguistically and with the help of which means it can differ in these three media forms, while emphasizing the role they play in the contextual representation of GDR culture. The analysis shows that linguistic and literary elements such as narrative style, culturally specific elements, intertextuality and intermediality, as well as levels of isotopia contribute to the emotional impact of the text and that the audio-described version has the highest emotional potential while the plain language version has the lowest emotional impact.