German Images of the Self and the Other Nationalist, Colonialist and Anti-Semitic Discourse 1871-1918

by Rash, Felicity

• ISBN13: 9780230282650
• ISBN10: 0230282652
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-11-27
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This monograph is a detailed linguistic analysis of the discourse of German nationalism, colonialism and Anti-Semitism using a methodological framework devised by Ruth Wodak et al., the Discourse Historical Approach. It pays particular attention to the discourse strategies, argumentation topoi and metaphors used by a selection of representative authors of both political propaganda and fiction. The study shows how the analysis of linguistic and social behavior and the connection between them sheds light on the nature and effects of human behavior, and on the motives and reasoning behind human actions. Within the context of nationalism and prejudiced behaviors, the construction in discourse of individual and group 'self-images' and the discursive means of contrasting these with 'other-images' is of major significance. It is widely believed that a self-image can only be formed if an image of a so-called "Other" exists as a focus of contrast and (frequently) suspicion and antipathy, which in extreme cases can lead to fear and hatred. Fear and hatred of the 'Other' in the form of racism and racial anti-Semitism, and the discursive representation of these, is therefore a major focus of this study.

Author Biography

FELICITY RASH Professor of German Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Her research interests lie chiefly within the field of Historical Discourse Analysis, and she has published on the political propaganda of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Paul Rohrbach and Adolf Hitler. Her most recent monograph is The Language of Violence, a close linguistics analysis of Hitler's Mein Kampf with its chief emphasis upon the use of metaphors.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. x
Methodological Framework	p. 1
Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse Historical Approach	p. 1
Historical Discourse Semantics (HDS)	p. 6
Critical Metaphor Analysis	p. 10
Presupposition and metacommunication	p. 14
Corpus Linguistics and Computer-Assisted Discourse Analysis	p. 16
Self-identity, Otherness and Nationalism	p. 20
Identity	p. 20
Self-identity and other-identity	p. 24
Myths, folk-tales and the creation of identity	p. 27
National identity and nationalism	p. 31
German nationalism, the Volk and the Other	p. 36
Fichte, Jahn, and the German nation	p. 37
Nationalism after the formation of the Second Reich	p. 43
Racism in Discourse	p. 50
What is race?	p. 50
Houston Stewart Chamberlain's view of race	p. 51
What is racism?	p. 59
Racist discourse	p. 61
Anti-Slavic discourse	p. 62
Heinrich Claß	p. 64
The treatment of Slavs in fiction	p. 68
Images of gypsies and anti-Ziganism	p. 73
Final thoughts	p. 79
Anti-Semitism in Discourse	p. 81
What is anti-Semitism?	p. 81
Discourse about Jews 1871-1879	p. 84
Wilhelm Marr	p. 85
Stoecker, Mommsen and Treitschke	p. 91
Anti-Semitic discourse 1880-1899	p. 95
Eugen Dühring	p. 95
Böckel and Fritsch	p. 98
Anti-Semitic discourse 1899-1914	p. 99
Houston Stewart Chamberlain	p. 99
Analysis of Chapters 5 and 6 of the Grundlagen	p. 101
DHA analysis of the Grundlagen	p. 110
Arische Weltanschauung	p. 115
Heinrich Claß's anti-Semitism as a precursor to Chamberlain's war-time essays	p. 116
Chamberlain's war-time anti-Semitism	p. 118
Anti-Semitism in fictional literature	p. 123
Final thoughts	p. 129
Colonialism in Discourse	p. 130
What is colonialism?	p. 130
The Self and the Other in colonialist discourse	p. 132
The German colonies 1884-1919	p. 134
Colonial racism	p. 137
Analysis of colonialist writing	p. 138
Carl Peters	p. 138
Paul Rohrbach's 'German Idea'	p. 142
Images of the Self and the Other in colonial fiction	p. 151
The journalistic portrayal of German culture in the colonies	p. 161
Final thoughts	p. 167
Discourse in War-Time	p. 169
The 'Bismarck effect'	p. 170
Paul Rohrbach's Zum Weltvolk hindurch!	p. 174
Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Kriegsaufsätze	p. 181
Textual analysis of the Kriegsaufsätze	p. 182
Computer-assisted analysis of Rohrbach's and Chamberlain's war essays	p. 189
The use of metaphors in the war essays	p. 193
War poetry	p. 194
War-time films	p. 199
Final thoughts	p. 201
Conclusion	p. 202
Notes to Chapters	p. 205
Bibliography	p. 209
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