While empirical studies on communicative differences are still a research desideratum in German-speaking countries, there is a strong public interest in this topic (see, for example, the numerous media reports). The focus is on stereotyping generalizations as well as situations in which communicative conflicts frequently occur (e.g. in forms of address).

Subproject P5 at the University of Zurich is investigating how this discourse is shaped with reference to Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, i.e. how the diatopic-pragmatic variation is perceived from a meta-linguistic perspective. To this end, a writing-based corpus will be compiled from ratepayer literature and online comments on newspaper articles. On the basis of this data, recurrent themes and argumentation patterns will be identified and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Finally, we will examine how the prevailing assumptions about communicative patterns in the discourse relate to the empirical analyses.

Project director:

• Prof. Dr. Christa Dürscheid (University of Zurich)

Researchers:

• Dr. Aline Meili (University of Zurich)
• Dr. Philipp Striedl (University of Zurich)