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
Applicant
Professor Dr. Martin Wengeler
Subject Area
Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441142207
Subproject 4 assumes that debates on external and internal security, though addressing very different issues (e.g., military interventions, or arms deliveries on the one hand, and anti-terror legislation, or video surveillance on the other), are nevertheless closely connected. Both often revolve around the core values of freedom and security. The subproject is therefore based on the hypothesis that both discourses are shaped by the fundamental discourse-semantic figure of the relationship between freedom and security. This relationship can be discursively modeled either as a balance or as a hierarchy in which one value takes precedence over the other. The project asks how “freedom” and “security” have been invoked in public debates to legitimize or reject political decisions, how the relationship between them is conceptualized, and how it evolves over time. In the first funding phase, debates on military interventions were examined through this lens. These analyses revealed frequent connections to the fight against “terrorism” and other threats to internal security. The central hypothesis for the second funding phase is that the fraught relationship between freedom and security also plays a crucial role in debates on internal security. This broad field of policy encompasses many subtopics but receives especially intense public attention when the protection of citizens’ lives against organized violence – most notably terrorist attacks – is at stake. For this reason, the subproject will focus on public debates about how to deal with terrorism. A guiding thesis here is that such debates often hinge on questions such as: How many civil liberties are citizens willing to surrender, or see restricted, in order to secure maximum protection from acts of violence? The debates following the 9/11 attacks provide a paradigmatic example of the interconnection between external and internal security discourses: on the one hand, discussions about Germany’s military involvement in Afghanistan, and on the other, the introduction of“ anti-terror packages” to guard against attacks. Both were presented as necessary measures to safeguard freedom and, above all, security. In the second funding phase, the project will examine how, over time, domestic sub-discourses – particularly those concerning right-wing and Islamist terrorism – have shaped discursive knowledge about internal security in Germany and about threats to freedom. Finally, the subproject will continue to contribute to the research group’s broader methodological aim of developing a collaborative, digitally supported approach to discourse analysis. Specifically, it will advance qualitative interpretations of the shifting meanings of key terms, the construction of reality through metaphor, metalinguistic commentary, and recurring argumentative patterns. These interpretations will be integrated into corpus databases in ways that allow for diachronic quantitative comparison.
DFG Programme
Research Units
