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In this paper, metalinguistic self-reflectory remarks on the German language, made by the author Saša Stanišić in his book Herkunft, are analyzed. After a brief introduction (1.), the state of research on and reception of Herkunft (2.) and a brief section on (auto)biographical writing and migration (3.), the theoretical backdrop, focusing on Roger Sell’s notion on literary pragmatics, is presented (4.). It is subsequently intertwined with Karl Bühler’s Organon Model and Klaus Brinker’s connection of text functions to Searle’s types of illocutions (5.) to form the framework of the analysis. Then, the focus shifts to the analysis itself (6.), which is centred around a chapter titled Bruce Willis spricht Deutsch [Bruce Willis Speaks German]. The article concludes with a summary of the main findings (7.).

The article presents findings on how German-speaking expatriates in China use the multi-functional messaging application WeChat. The paper is structured as follows: After the introduction (1.), in which the societal relevance of WeChat and its potential for sociolinguistic research is addressed, the current state of research is presented (2.). Subsequently, the main features of WeChat are explained (3.). After that, the method used to acquire the data on China-based German speakers’ WeChat usage is described (4.): Between Nov. 2018 and April 2019, an online survey was conducted, and answered by 208 individuals. The answers provided form the basis of the results, which are presented in the fifth section. The last section (6.) contextualizes the findings and discusses perspectives for further research. After the bibliography, an appendix is given. It provides the link to the publicly available dataset on which the presented research is based.

The present paper develops the study design of a linguistic analysis of digital communication practices among German-speaking expats in China using WeChat. Within digital communication in China, the messenger application WeChat is the most widely used means of communication, boasting roughly one billion users. There has not been relevant linguistic research on communication making use of this application to date. We especially lack studies addressing the communication practices with WeChat by native speakers of German, who form a relatively large group of expatriates in China (20,000+ Germans alone), mostly working in the automobile industry. After a short introduction (1.) which addresses the relevant research question to be tackled, the previous research on WeChat is summarized (2.). The attention WeChat has received in the media of the German language area becomes visible, but we can also see that there is no systematic scholarly discourse focusing on the application just yet. This is followed by a section on the communicative features and functionality of WeChat (3.): here it is pointed out that WeChat has multiple functions which go significantly further than messaging applications such as WhatsApp provide their users. These features comprise e.g. online payment, GPS tracking and navigation, money transfers, and monetary gifts. Furthermore, WeChat combines features of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. A thorough description of these features provides the basis for laying out the study design of the online survey (4.). The online survey comprises more than twenty questions on the use of WeChat with special regard to the expatriate setting in China. The paper ends with a section on the expected results (5.).

The article summarizes the main findings of a contrastive and diachronic study of a corpus of 109 Finnish and German thematic openings of linguistic journal articles from the periodicals Virittäjä and Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur. The methodology used is based on a modification of Fredrickson/Swales (1994).

The article summarizes the main findings of a contrastive and diachronic study of a corpus of 109 Finnish and German thematic openings of linguistic journal articles from the periodicals Virittäjä and Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur. The methodology used is based on a modification of Fredrickson/Swales (1994).

The article summarizes the main findings of a contrastive and diachronic study of a corpus of 109 Finnish and German thematic openings of linguistic journal articles from the periodicals Virittäjä and Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur. The methodology used is based on a modification of Fredrickson/Swales (1994).

En el presente artículo se esboza un procedimiento metodológico que permite un análisis estructural del acercamiento temático a los artículos de lingüística en revistas científicas. La metodología aquí desarrollada se basa en los modelos propuestos por Hyland (2000) y Fredrickson / Swales (1994). Tras desarrrollar el propio modelo, éste se comprueba a través de un corpus de catorce artículos. Los artículos están recogidos en las Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur. En las concluisos se presentan las perspectivas para futuras investigaciones en el marco de este campo temático.