Authors’ names:
- Elena V. Razumnykh – Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
- Galina А. Maksimova – Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Kaluga branch, Kaluga, Russia
Abstract:
The article aims to identify and describe the latest changes in the perception of crisis-related events by the German society. In order to do that, we studied the contexts and ways in which the German word ‘Krise’ was used in Deutsch Perfekt magazines throughout 2021, 2022, and 2023. Our investigation methods comprise continuous sampling, content analysis, and comparison with the results of similar studies carried out in English and Russian languages. This study is novel in that it focuses on non-political texts, avoiding political discourse which has traditionally become a major source for crisis discourse studies. The prevailing semantics of the ‘crisis’ concept, peculiarities of its contextual representation, and language means used therein were selected as the key parameters signaling changes in the perception of crisis. These parameters were described in detail with the breakdown by years and summarized in a table. Our analysis shows that the idea of crisis as viewed by Germans has changed from positive to negative over the period of three years, which is supported by transformation of contexts’ overall semantics and emergence of specific language means to intensify negative connotations and heighten emotions when discussing crisis-related events. At that, the overall emotionality and metaphoricity of the German crisis discourse is still lower as compared with that of Russian or English, which might be due to a different target audience and pragmatics of texts under analysis. The results of the study are important both from the theoretical and practical points of view. Apart from offering insights into the national-specific picture of reality and the related cognitive processes, they may be used for further investigation of crisis discourse by linguists, both in German and other languages.
| Section | LANGUAGE AND CULTURE |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2024-66-2-107-120 |
| Downloads | 152 |
| Key words | crisis; crisis discourse; crisis communication; contextual representation; German language |