ABSTRACT
Language as a system does not change with political regimes, but the way it is used does, and the changes under totalitarian rule are arguably the most drastic. Any classification of language use as totalitarian depends on the extra-linguistic category of totalitarianism. The study of National Socialist discourse has been a central feature of linguistic criticism and research and cultural studies for three-quarters of a century. For several decades afterwards, detailed studies on Nazi-language use concentrated on the oratorical performances of Hitler and Goebbels and on the compilation of detailed dictionaries that documented Nazi-specific lexemes and phrases and their historical origins, as well as on their post-war thematisation as Nazi-typical vocabulary. The breakdown of a totalitarian regime does not lead automatically to the disappearance of its discourse from the public sphere. A different form of instrumentalisation of Nazi discourse has been its use as a label to denounce political opponents by blaming them for manipulating language like the Nazis.
