Verbalization of the value concept ‘TOLERANCE” in the speech of German-speaking youth (on the material of TRU DOKU reports)

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying means of representing the value concept ‘tolerance’ in the speech of modern German-speaking youth. The purpose of the research is to determine the place of tolerance among other values of the modern German society and to systematize the language units that reflect commitment to this value. The research material consists of 50 short documentaries created by the German-speaking YouTube channel ‘TRU DOKU’ and released in 2020–2021. The speakers’ value systems are reconstructed by means of analyzing their evaluative statements. The latter are divided into explicit direct, explicit indirect and implicit ones, depending on the degree of their compliance with the generalized formula of evaluative statements derived from background reading on the topic. In the course of the study, the speech products of the project participants are examined for the presence of language means that help to convey evaluativeness. The list of such linguistic means includes adjectives, nouns, verbs of general and specific evaluation, intensifying adverbs and particles, predicates of opinion and perception, comparative constructions, including the ones in the form of metaphors and phraseological units. Special attention is paid to emotive and emotive-associative vocabulary. In addition, the semantics of lexemes used in the context of evaluative statements is taken into account, which can also be used as a source of information about the speakers’ value systems. As a result of the analysis, it was found that implicit evaluative statements prevail when it comes to displaying ‘tolerance’ as a value. In addition to the listed types of language units, the verb sich wünschen is widely used to express wishes and hopes, modal verbs and the verb lassen are employed to convey attitudes towards tolerance and the opposite, undesirable situation of discrimination. Furthermore, the construction “egal + indirect question” and the cliché “jemanden so nehmen, wie man ist” are relatively frequent. The semantics of lexemes in the analyzed contexts enabled the inference that the participants of the videos encourage the viewer to make a cognitive effort in order to better understand other cultures and behaviors. The general conclusion about the place of tolerance in the value system of the German-speaking youth is that this concept is currently gaining more ground, but is not yet a generally accepted value, as evidenced by a large number of explicative constructions in the speech of the participants.