ABSTRACT
The history of public discourse in the post-war period has been heavily influenced by the socio-political agenda. Over the last 50 years there have been many debates and running themes, some of which have strongly shaped modern ways of life and the political situation in Europe: debates about economic systems (Planwirtschaft, Marktwirtschaft), the question of Europe, the role of military forces in Germany, questions and problems of education, the image of young people as well as their lifestyle with all its changing dangers and problems (drugs, violence, the 1968 student revolts) and their particular way of speaking (see ch. 37), the problem of foreign words in German, relations between the two Germanies, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the threat of terrorism, the changes in many aspects of private life and sexual practice, questions of energy production and the environment, debates about development aid, foreign workers, immigration and ethnic integration. These topics, to which others could easily be added, were recently analysed in a seminal study Kontroverse Begriffe (Stötzel and Wengeler 1995) by a Düsseldorf research group. Linguistically, the importance of public discourse and of ‘public topics’ consists of three main aspects:
(i) The way such topics are dealt with brings about certain views and attitudes with regard to people, groups, events, etc. Whilst there is no direct or causal relation between language use and attitudes – the former being connected and filtered by intermediary aspects such as the understanding of utterances and critical reflection – public discourse does fundamentally shape the views, attitudes and beliefs of people, contributing to public decision making and the eventual successful (or otherwise) outcome of such decisions.
