ABSTRACT
The three contributions I was asked to discuss cover relevant social phenomena from very different perspectives: on the one hand, language attitudes consciously and subconsciously co-determine our perceptions of others in all possible contexts; on the other, the expression of emotions, such as love, governs in manifold ways our interpersonal relationships, our behaviors, and our activities. And third, critical problem-oriented qualitative research, as illustrated by many approaches in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), offers an entry point to investigate salient factors co-determining our daily lives. Thus, the three chapters in this section differ significantly in that one chapter reviews research on a specific phenomenon (love), the second chapter reviews research on an important factor which accompanies all communication (language attitudes), whereas the third contribution discusses a particular school in the domain of Discourse Studies (Critical Discourse Analysis), which could be employed and applied to study both love or attitudes towards language use. Hence, the three chapters have to be regarded as belonging to different dimensions of scholarly work: oriented towards specific social phenomena (as objects of investigation) in contrast to theoretical and methodological approaches which could be used to study such phenomena.
