Heterogeneous Resistance Cultures: Linguistic Practices of Resisting from 1933 to 1945

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Britt-Marie Schuster
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395401005

The project aims to utilize a representative full-text digitalized corpus to investigate comprehensively how language is used to exercise resistance, which language use patterns can be established, and which functions these patterns perform. Despite several calls to correct the research desiderata in this area, key documents of the German resistance between 1933 and 1945 have previously been the subject of only selective linguistic studies on National Socialism, at best. The project intends to take systematic account of the heterogeneity of resistance communication in particular, explained firstly by the links to differing social and/or political milieus, secondly by the actors differing positions, and thirdly by differing conflicts with and approaches to the National Socialist regime and the increasingly integrated society, the language of which is examined in Heidrun Kämpers study. To analyse these resistance texts, existing approaches to action-oriented discourse analysis form the basis of a discrete multidimensional model, developed to incorporate the above prerequisites while extrapolating patterns of action (such as actions constituting reality, identity and relationships, and actions of contradiction, disproving and resistance) from the textual surface and ascertaining changes in these patterns. In methodological respects, the research project essentially works with linguistic hermeneutics. However, it also provides for a linking of quantitative and qualitative methods, applied on the basis of the analysis model.The study of resistance communication will thus take account of the findings of contemporary historical research yet aims, however, to achieve a discrete linguistic profile in the area of resistance to National Socialism. It will enable an understanding of resistance not only in the sense of resistance activity, for instance in accordance with the usual classification of active and passive resistance, but also in terms of language use, establishing common and diverging factors to patterns of public communication as performed by the National Socialist regime and the language use of the integrated society under that regime. The projects study of the utilization of prior practices and discourses imparted through this use aims to both demonstrate the attachment to tradition in resistance language use and also call attention to breaks from tradition and changes in language use under the conditions of totalitarianism.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants