Criminal utterences

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Mustafa Temmuz Oglakcioglu
• Subject Area: Criminal Law
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 504201674

The piece of work deals with offences that prohibit a certain utterance (in a certain context). It involves not only the current topic "brutalization of the communication culture on the Internet" and hate speech, but also deals with prohibitions that might initially not be classified as utterance offences (for example, the prohibition on lying, threaten, to ask for something or to promise something). These penalized expressions are systematized using the speech act theories of Austin and Searle. In this way it is also underlined that utterance offenses - the author follows a definition that deviates from the prevailing view - forbid certain "illocutions", i.e. different forms of social interaction (action par excellence). The theoretical classification of certain verbs that designate speech acts also allows conclusions to be drawn about the controversial interpretation of offenses in the application of the law, which is demonstrated with a very detailed and alphabetically ordered individual analysis of the utterance offenses (from offering, to insulting and threatening to advertising). Finally, in a large final section, the basic lines of a constitutional legitimation of offenses against statements are formulated in order to check the constitutionality (and also appropriateness) of the offenses in the Criminal Code on the basis of this. The work comes to the result that a not inconsiderable number of offenses must at least be modified, and it also deals in detail with the question of whether the new patterns of Internet communication require a criminal reaction (in the form of a tightening or expansion of the utterance offences).

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants