Vom Ausruf zum Aushang. Die KommunikationsformÖffentliche Bekanntmachungin Luxemburg (1795–1920): Eine text- und systemlinguistische Analyse

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents findings of the binational project “Language Standardization in Diversity: The case of German in Luxembourg (1795–1920)”. Point of departure is the general assumption that language contact and multilingualism figure prominently in language change (Heine and Kuteva 2005). However, their specific impact on language standardization understood as special type of language change (Mattheier, 1998) has scarcely been studied. This is also particularly valid for the history of text genres which have been described as the virtual ‘switch points’ between the history of language and the history of the language community (Mattheier, 1998). With a long history of multilingualism, Luxembourg constitutes a prime case for studying the impact of all these elements, i. e. language contact between Germanic varieties (i. e. Moselle-Franconian/emerging Luxembourgish, colloquial German) and between German and French. To investigate the process of standardization, the project mainly draws on a main corpus of 5.649 predominantly bilingual German/French public notices issued by the municipality of Luxembourg. Published as parallel texts in German and French, an important number of the public notices were produced by four different Luxembourgish printers. However, public notices defined as ‘form of communication’ (Schmitz, 2015) encompass different text genres, e. g. laws, regulations or auctions. Three notices are analyzed in detail concerning functional (Brinker et al. 2014), pragmatic (Klein, 2000) and linguistic aspects. Linguistically, certain constructions can be identified as typical for specific genres and for specific periods. In the text cluster of strongly normative texts, for instance, we find canonical formulas from (French) legal language. Corpus analysis of explanation-introducing ‘considérant que’ shows that their realization in the German column is variable at the beginning of the 19th century and also exhibits structural and lexical similarities with the French original. In the course of the century the formula is firstly expressed more uniformly, secondly adapted to German characteristics (towards nominal structures) and finally subject to lexical changes. After its emergence from the influence of French, the formula thus manages to develop autonomously.