Individual freedom and social norms – Sustainability and responsibility discourses on the environment and education since 1990 (Subproject 3: Individual and society, Phase 2: Educational discourse)

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Nina Janich; Professor Dr. Jörg Kilian
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441142207

A key objective of the subproject is to contribute to research on the history of the German language since 1990 as a history of discourse, both in terms of methodology and content, within the framework of the research group “Controversial Discourses.” The discourse on education in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1945 has not yet been adequately investigated, and there has been no research with a historical perspective, particularly for the period since 1990. This project addresses this research gap. The initial hypothesis is that the discourse on education in Germany since 1990 – just like the discourse on the environment examined in project phase 1 – has been particularly shaped by the basic discursive semantic figure of ‘individual freedom vs. social norm’. The right to education is an individual human right that is explicitly stated in the 17 goals of a global sustainability policy (Goal 4); the currently dominant orientation in educational policy toward the concept of competence also focuses on the individual. However, social norms also apply to the implementation of this human right, as expressed, for example, in the educational standards. The words "competence" and "educational standard" can therefore be considered framing key words for this normative tension in the discourse on education. The project uses corpus-based analysis to identify the lexical networks that have linguistically constructed the concept of “education” around this conceptual bracket in public usage since 1990. The corpora used are keyword-based selections from the research group's core corpus (plenary minutes of the German Bundestag, most important print media in Germany since 1990) as well as subproject-specific compilations of plenary minutes of state parliaments and educational policy texts from the education ministries of two federal states. The texts will be annotated on the basis of a collaborative set of categories established in the first phase and to be further developed. They will be interpreted on the basis of discourse hermeneutic and linguistic-historical approaches and methods (including topoi, metaphors, sentence semantics, e.g., agent designations, role attributions/stereotypes). Using the example of the educational content “environmental education”, the linguistic construction and constitution of socially expected knowledge and skills in the field of tension between individual competence and collective standardisation (educational standards) are reconstructed as facets of a (sustainable?) concept of ‘education’ and the associated attributions of responsibility. The controversies surrounding the school system and the associated linguistic field (three-branch – two-branch; comprehensive school, grammar school, district school, etc.) play just as much a role as the controversies surrounding educational content in the context of formulating competencies and standards (e.g. proficiency level, performance).

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5182: Controversial discourses: Language history as contemporary history since 1990
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Noah Bubenhofer; Professorin Dr. Juliane Schröter