Project Details
Projekt
"Germany's freedom and security are now also being defended in the Hindu Kush”. Discourses on internal and external security in Germany since 1990
Applicants
Dr. Kristin Kuck; Professor Dr. Martin Wengeler
Subject Area
Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441142207
In the first funding phase, the sub-project expands the applicant’s narrative language historiography of controversial discourses on external security up to about 1990 by examining discussions since then, especially about Bundeswehr missions and participation and non-participation in worldwide military operations. This will be related to the question of how "freedom" and "security" were used in such public discussions to legitimise or reject pending decisions. The difficult relationship between freedom and security will also be the focus of the planned second funding phase, in which another field of study, that of internal security, will be considered. During the studied period, discussions about external security, about military operations, which aim supposedly to secure the freedoms of a democratic society, are often linked to and justified by the fight against international "terrorism". This interlocks them closely with considerations on protection against "terror". An overarching question of both funding periods is therefore: What tensions arise between the new self-image of the Federal Republic of Germany in security policy, which revolves around the very concept of security, and the highly ambiguous concept of freedom? We aim to understand and describe this relationship as a basic discursive figure in democratic discourses over time. The application of this analysis towards the discussions around so-called internal and external security promises insights into other societal topics as well. In the current debates around the Coronavirus, for example, the relationship between security – in this case relating to health – and freedom is at issue, as is the case in debates about data protection or environmental protection. However, during the requested funding period the focus of this study is security against external threats and the claim of the worldwide preservation and/or restoration of freedom and human rights. According to our starting hypothesis these high-value terms concern the (de)legitimization of military operations, defence spending and other German participation and non-participation in international multilateral missions.In addition, the sub-project contributes to the methodological goal of the project group of developing a collaborative digitally supported discourse analysis. To this end, the sub-project will above all further develop qualitative interpretations of the changing meaning of key words (e.g. with analyses inspired by frame semantics), of constructions of reality through the use of metaphors, of meta-linguistic statements and of serially used argumentation patterns. This will be done in such a way as to enable diachronic quantitative comparisons via annotations in the corpus databases.
DFG Programme
Research Units
