German Communication Research Articles

#AISCICOMM24. Discussing the role of (generative) AI for science communication research and science communication practice

The annual conference of the Science Communication Division of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) was held in Zurich, Switzerland, from 5–7 June 2024. The conference attracted around 125 researchers and science communication practitioners from Europe and beyond. In this review, I provide an overview of the conference and discuss some of the challenges for researching AI in science communication as well as for science communication practice.

Немецкий подход к гарантированию плюрализма в сфере массовой коммуникации

Using the political and philosophical context, the article analyzes the German model of guaranteeing pluralism in the field of mass communication, the core of which is formed by the communication rights of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which have undergone a deep reinterpretation by the Federal Constitutional Court. Starting from the abstract politico-philosophical value of pluralism as the foundation of German democratic theory, its path is traced through its integration with general constitutional and legal principles. This integration leads to the concretization of pluralism in the communication sphere as specific regulatory provisions within constitutionalized ordinary legislation. Through the examination, the article highlights the key parameters of this model that correspond to the pluralistic theory of democracy. These parameters determine the logic of constitutional-legal regulation in the German communication sphere and influence the doctrinal aspects of fundamental rights.

Images, clusters and types – Making sense of (large) image corpora and related practices in and with digital media

In November 2021, the Visual Communication Division of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) celebrated its 20th anniversary at the University of Trier with a one-year pandemic delay. Marion G. Müller, Katharina Christ and Christof Barth organized an excellent conference to mark the occasion and to reflect on past and current trends, topics, and challenges in visual communication research. Resuming the thematic scope of the division’s first conference held in Hamburg in 2000, the conference focused on “The power of images – Images of power. On visual political communication in digital contexts.” While analyses of press photography in the tradition of political iconology were the main approaches twenty years ago, the program of the anniversary conference demonstrated diversified thematic foci and methodological approaches. The presentations examined a broad range of visual digital media and visual communication exerted by various actors ranging from the press to politicians to activists and citizens. Concurrently, we also saw a considerable diversity concerning methodological approaches and a rising influence of computational methods for analyzing the increasingly large numbers of images in digital media environments. With the panel “Image type / image cluster analysis as an approach to analyzing large numbers of images in online environments,” a discussion on diverse methodological approaches and their potentials and challenges among our members started. After the conference, we decided to open up our internal discussion and reach out to international colleagues working on similar questions. The long-term result is this Thematic Section on diverse methods for structuring image data corpora drawing on different traditions of visual analysis.

On (missing) links between German, Latin American, and French Mediatization Research: Reflections on Diverse Research Milieus and Their Traditions

Mediatization research is no European invention, being also rooted in Latin American Cultural Studies and semiotics. Building on an analytical scheme on how to analyze the history of a study field in communication research in terms of its corpus of ideas and its social corpus, this article discusses the transnational (dis-)connections in the field of mediatization research regarding a) the Latin American and French roots of this research field and b) by trying to answer why they are still so unknown, at least in German communication studies. Still today, E. Verón, Martín-Barbero, A. Mattelart, and others are more or less unknown authors in German communication studies.

How German Communication Research Discovered Bourdieu but Missed His Potential for the Study of (Populist) Political Communication

Starting with an outline of Pierre Bourdieu’s reception in German-speaking communication research, this article identifies an important omission: his writings on politics and the corresponding symbolic struggles. In particular, the field of research on political communication could profit from the approaches outlined in these publications. This is exemplified by research on populist communication, which has become one of the most important topics in the field of political communication. This contribution argues that, together with Bourdieu’s theory of social class, his conception of politics could be a fruitful way to understand current (right-wing) populism, with its construction of “the people,” its particular claim to representation, as well as its social-structural basis and appeal to certain groups. However, there are several barriers immanent in the dominant approaches to research on political communication that can be understood from the history of the field and that have hindered the adoption of such a perspective in German-speaking communication research.

NATIONAL AND CULTURAL FEATURES OF THE SPEECH ACT CONGRATULATIONS IN THE MODERN GERMAN LANGUAGE (compared to Russian)

The proposed paper analyzes the features of the speech act congratulation in modern German in comparison with Russian. The author proceeds from the understanding of etiquette speech acts as representatives of the communicative category politeness, characterizes these phenomena as socially conditioned, changeable and, as a result, requiring repeated study. The purpose of the article is the comparative consideration of congratulation in informal communication in German and Russian. The tasks of the work include a review of available research papers on the issue, a comparative description of congratulations in two nationalcultural communities taking into account traditions and customs of the people and the specifics of language units. The dictionary platforms of the German, authentic didactic resources and examples from the author’s personal correspondence are used as practical material. An analysis of the semantic and syntactic properties of the performatives constituting the speech act congratulation in both languages allows to draw conclusions regarding the use of etiquette formulas in close connection with a holidays certain category: in contrast of the Russian verb поздравлять, the German verb gratulieren is used in congratulations on personal events of the addressee, at that time how congratulations on state or church holidays are good wishes, expressed by nominal phrases. The novelty of the research lies also in addressing the issues of stereotyping and modification of the semantic meanings of particular holidays in German culture, emerging of new significant occasions under the influence of democratization processes in society, due to the spread of political correctness ideas, which determines the relevance of the corresponding congratulatory phrases.

ԲԱՅԻ ԱՐԺՈՒԹԱՅՆՈՒԹՅԱՆ ՅՈՒՐԱՑՄԱՆ ԴԺՎԱՐՈՒԹՅՈՒՆՆԵՐԸ ԳԵՐՄԱՆԵՐԵՆԻ՝ ՈՐՊԵՍ ՕՏԱՐ ԼԵԶՎԻ ԴԱՍԱՎԱՆԴՄԱՆ ԸՆԹԱՑՔՈՒՄ / DIFFIUILTIES OF STUDYING VERBAL VALENCY WHILE TEACHING GERMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Understanding the topic “verbal valency” in German lessons is a complex and time-consuming task that requires two-sided persistent work both during the lesson and after it. The aricle is about the study of this problem and highlights both the features of verbal valency in German and the peculiarities of its teaching methods and strategies. The right lesson planning strategy and the choice of appropriate methods are critical to understanding and fully mastering this topic. Our study was conducted among 3rd year students of the State University after V.Brusov. The methodology used and the tested exercises make it possible to understand the intricacies of teaching methods and techniques, lead to the easiest and most productive mastering of the topic, which in turn contribute to the continuous improvement of teaching methods and techniques, significantly improve understanding of the language, promote free self-expression, effective and competent free communication in German.

Поздравление как социокультурный коммуникативный феномен (на материале немецкого, французского и русского языков)

The purpose of the article is the comparative consideration of Congratulation in informal communication in German, French and Russian linguistic cultures. The method used by the authors of comparative analysis of the semantic and syntactic properties of performatives constituting the speech act Congratulations in these languages allows to draw conclusions regarding the use of etiquette formulas in close connection with a holidays certain category. In contrast of the Russian verb поздравлять, the German verb gratulieren is used in congratulations on personal events of the addressee, while the French verb féliciter is used more often in official communication; in everyday speech preference is given to its substantive derivative félicitations. Congratulations on state or church holidays are good wishes, expressed by nominal phrases. The novelty of the research lies also in addressing the issues of stereotyping and modification of the semantic meanings of particular holidays, emerging of new significant occasions under the influence of democratization processes in society, due to the spread of political correctness ideas, which determines the relevance of the corresponding congratulatory phrases.

German vaccine discourse: Changes over time and polarization

The paper discusses a segment of modern social and political German communication which can be defined as vaccine discourse. The study considers discourse to be a complex linguistic unit of an overtext level, which includes texts, utterances, and various communication forms that are encompassed by a knowledge system and correspond to a certain social context. In creating the context of a speech act, all its participants are involved. Special role is also devoted not only to the interaction of utterances but also to the social context they are used in. Combined, these factors create a multidimensional discourse space. Discourse, being the result of chains of utterances united by the topic, constitutes the surrounding reality. We studied the formation of the reality with the means of discourse on the materials of the vaccine discourse, with its development being based on different opinions. We analyzed linguistic features of the German vaccine discourse using discussions and debates in the Bundestag, which took place in spring 2022. We detected major features of the vaccine discourse: polarization, diversity, and incompleteness. The examples prove argumentation to be central in forming the discourse, as it is used by the individuals when seeking the truth. We defined the most important argument strategies and characterized linguistic means responsible for the emotionally polarizing part of the discourse. We detected the relationship of different discourse levels having analyzed discourse contextualization. Moreover, we demonstrated how the microlevel of discourse, which is associated with vaccination, creates impulses for its development to the macrolevel reflecting German democratic challenges.

Phonoesthetics of German speech in the perception of Russian speaking recipients

The purpose of this article is to study the aesthetic side of sounding German speech perceived by native speakers of the Russian language, as well as to determine the linguistic mechanisms that determine the nature of their assessment. Current changes in Russian-speaking recipients’ perception of the sounding German speech are revealed. The posts in the Internet forums are analyzed, and negative stereotypes are identified which determine the assessment of the aesthetics of German pronunciation, and it origin, with a special role played by feature films about the war against Nazi Germany and documentary chronicles with the speeches of National Socialism leaders. The conclusion is made about the excessive emotionality and aggressiveness of such speeches, however, this manner of speaking is a “stage language” (Bühnensprache) which is not typical of everyday German communication. This aggressively stylized sounding of the German language is used today in popular culture often to create a feeling of rudeness among foreign-language recipients. At the segment level, the negative assessment of sounding German speech by Russianspeaking recipients is associated with the pronunciation of the uvular trembling consonant [ʀ] and the voiced uvular spirant [ʁ]. Aspirates and glottal stops in the German language foster the participants of the experiment and the authors of the posts on the Internet to characterize German speech as clear, but in terms of its melody − as torn or “barking”. Due to the aspiration of voiceless plosives, as well as voiceless palatal spirant [ç], Russian-speaking recipients characterize German speech as hissing and whistling. At the suprasegmental level, greater tension in the pronunciation of sounds, along with a rising tone in neutral communication, make Russian-speaking recipients qualify German speech as rough and aggressive.

Конструкции апокойну как один из маркеров разговорности в немецком языке

Oral communication is based on the spoken language of native speakers as a means of everyday communication. Colloquial speech in any national language (in this case, German) differs from its written form. Generally, oral speech is considered not in terms of deviation from the written word, but in terms of its peculiarities that shape the norms of oral communication. Colloquial speech is special due to a number of extralinguistic factors (it is informal, spontaneous and taking place in the moment of speaking) as well as the close interaction between verbal and nonverbal components. Colloquial speech is the basis of existence of language and is therefore of particular interest to any kind of oral communication research, relevant a priori. Colloquial markedness is clearly manifested in speech syntax and expressed through a certain concentration of colloquial indicators (according to V.D. Devkin). In this paper, by markers of colloquialism the author understands the syntactic features of colloquial speech forming the so-called colloquial flavour of oral communication in German. The article aimed to provide a brief description of blending constructions (apokoinu) as syntactic markers of colloquialism in the German language. It is known that apokoinu constructions are based on the contamination of two syntactic functions in one language unit and represent peculiar syntactic structures. Being a universal marker of colloquialism, they function mainly in spontaneous colloquial speech and illustrate a transition of a syntactic structure from internal to external speech. However, apokoinu constructions can be used as a syntactic stylistic means of imagery in the codified literary language. The research found that they have certain structural and syntactic forms and fulfil the function of rapid transfer of information in speech. The author concludes that, although they are not frequently used in German colloquial speech, apokoinu constructions form the idea of the specifics of colloquial indicators that underlie German colloquial syntax.

Appraisal as co-selection and media performativity: 5G technology imaged in German news discourse

Abstract This article views appraisal as co-selection patterns of target, source and evaluative parameters and investigates the ways in which news discourse retells news stories and reproduces truthful reality. We combined the corpus-assisted method and quantitative/qualitative analysis of the data, i.e., 904 sentences which were extracted from the corpus of German 5G news reports by selecting the top 5 items from each of the noun keywords lists of the three subcorpora of economics, politics and technology news reports. It was found that the German media restage the necessity and desirability to promote the development of German communication facilities/technology through international cooperation, particularly Germany-Sino cooperation. In addition, a hesitant image was evoked as to the high-profile 5G development in Germany with an awareness of the potential security risks and economic losses. On the intersubjective dimension, our findings suggest that journalists make full exploitation of different dialogistic positioning strategies for closing down or opening up the dialogic space to a greater or lesser degree. More specifically, they tend to acknowledge and endorse the positive/negative attitudes attributed to the non-authorial voices towards particular targets in the fields of economics, politics or technology. A future comparison with the genre of news comments or editorials would deepen our understanding of the performativity of media.

Conceptualizing the dialogical structure of mass communication: A comparison of the dialogical networks and mediated social communication approaches

Theoretical contributions conceptualizing dialogical processes and structures of mass communication are scattered, hence different disciplines work on the same issues without uniting their potentials. The mediated social communication (MSC) approach developed by German communication scholars and the dialogical network (DN) approach informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis share important characteristics. This paper contributes to interdisciplinary research by comparing the approaches, analyzing their similarities and differences, and discussing their integration. The MSC approach offers additional theoretical considerations; the DN approach provides pointers to the empirical analysis of dialogical structures in mass communication. Essentially, both approaches conceptualize journalists as mediators of the exchange between diverse (individual or collective) actors speaking for social groups. This journalistic mediation of various statements enables a shared society-wide discourse essential for the existence of any society. However, the actual performance of this mediation varies between countries and depends on editorial practices, norms, and resources, which differ across media types and outlets. Future research could use the theoretical conceptualizations of these approaches to investigate communicative actor relations more thoroughly and focus on how they develop in the context of journalistic mediation.

French Military Intelligence on the Brink of War, 1939–1940

By the outbreak of World War II, French intelligence services had accumulated encyclopedic knowledge of Germany’s military establishment. France, for example, had an embedded mole in secret German communication centers who supplied high-value intelligence for more than a decade and gave vital Enigma encryption secrets to the Allies, and it had another formidable agent who unmasked German spies and “turned” officers in Abwehr, Germany’s principal spy agency. German intelligence boasted of penetrating the Deuxieme Bureau, France’s most important intelligence service, and secret sessions of the Senate. In truth, neither France nor Germany could hardly conceal secrets from one another. France’s success in intelligence, however, has been obfuscated by the ignominious Fall of France in a few short weeks as well as France’s failure to anticipate the audacious German attack through the Ardennes. Arguably less a shortcoming of intelligence, this failure was more a question of France’s leadership and its colossal inaction against the German Western Offensive.

Politeness Strategy in German Communication: Focusing on Politeness according to Familiarity

Politeness Strategy in German Communication: Focusing on Politeness according to Familiarity

Teaching professionally oriented oral communication in German to future social workers

Teaching professionally oriented oral communication in German to future social workers

Regularly used phrasal verbs German language

Phrasal verbs are used very regularly in the German language, and native German speakers are found to use phrasal verbs on a daily basis and cannot do without the use of phrasal verbs in everyday communicative situations. However, phrasal verbs in German language teaching as a second/foreign language are almost non-existent. That is German as a second language German as a foreign language teaching environments, in the world, and specifically in Germany, hardly teaches the meaning of phrasal verbs to students, and neglect teaching the correct ways of using them, despite the fact that they are an essential part of daily native German communication. Therefore, and due to the vitality of phrasal verbs to native speakers of German, students should be taught and educated to be capable of understanding and using phrasal verbs when interacting in German because knowledge of phrasal verbs would normally lead to better German language proficiency and more native-like communication. Nonetheless, phrasal verbs are not easy, and students often find them difficult, because phrasal verbs carry a specific meaning which is not inferable from the meaning of its composing words inseparable form as well as other reasons which have been explained within this article.

Ready for the unexpected: theoretical framework and empirical findings on communication consulting

PurposeAlthough the market for communication consultancies has been booming worldwide for many years now, there are still only a handful of theoretical concepts and empirical findings pertaining to communication consulting. This is the fundamental starting point for this paper, which sets out to answer the following research questions: What is the function of communication consulting? What are the differences between consultants' expectations of consulting and those of clients? How do consultants and clients deal with the contradiction between proximity and distance? What are the potential threats to the autonomy of consulting?Design/methodology/approachThe paper combines a theoretical framework of communication consulting with a survey of German communication consultants and clients.FindingsFirst, a theoretical framework is developed in which communication consulting is defined as follows: First, it opens up decision-related contingency and thus produces additional options for managing communicative relationships with internal and external target groups, before helping to close decision-related contingency. The results of the survey show that the expectations of clients and consultants for communication consulting are largely similar. In the closing dimension especially, most clients share the active role of self-conception of most consultants. On the other hand, in some opening activities, clients wish for more critical, independent and courageous consulting.Research limitations/implicationsThe scope of the empirical material is limited to communication consultants and clients in Germany and may therefore not be valid in other cultural contexts.Originality/valueThe paper closes a gap in both theory building and empirical research in communication consulting. The theory presented conceives of communication consulting as a hybrid of management consulting and process consulting and, in addition to the opening dimension, also takes the closing dimension of consulting into consideration for the first time. The study reveals a certain schizophrenia in clients: on the one hand, clients demand more critical consultants and thus call for more distance; on the other hand, clients prefer to be close to their consultants, particularly if they wish to work with them for the long-term.

Use of drama techniques in teaching elementary communication in German to primary school children

In the article, the rational for using drama techniques in teaching elementary communication in German to primary school children and the need for special training for students/teachers in using such techniques in foreign language studies is explained. Four types of elementary communication in foreign language which are typical for primary school children (quasi-, proto-, para- and metacommunication) are identified and described in the context of the development of elementary foreign language competence in primary school children at A1.1 and A1.2 levels. The imitation was found to be a main tool for foreign language learning at A1.1 first level of the development of elementary foreign language competence which provides for receptive and imitative oral German language learning based on perception, understanding and reproduction of foreign linguistic units with no modifications and with minor modifications. In the context of initial two of these four types of elementary communication in foreign language (quasi- and protocommunication), most appropriate drama techniques are selected for successful implementation of suggested foreign language learning mechanisms in primary school children, such as «hear and act», «magic mirror», «dramatic identification», «kaleidoscope», «sculptures», finger drama games, puppet theater, fairy tale games. Four groups of drama techniques are selected based on established language activities, namely those aimed at the development of the following skills in students: perception and understanding of German linguistic units; reproduction of German language models based on imitation without modifications; reproduction of German language models with minor modifications; building short German phrases based on analogy. Implementation method for selected techniques is demonstrated using examples from German language school books and from teaching practices.

Science communication research in the German-speaking countries: A content analysis of conference abstracts

The study examines the state of science communication research in the German-speaking countries. Based on a standardized content analysis of all extended abstracts submitted to the annual conferences of the German Communication Association’s science communication division from 2014 to 2018 (N = 141), it describes the respective scholarly community, its research foci and objects. The results indicate that science communication has developed toward a well-established community and marks an institutionalization of the research field. Furthermore, the findings of the content analysis indicate that science communication research in the German-speaking countries shows parallels to international developments in terms of research foci, objects, and analytical models, but also differences regarding theories and methods.