Patrick Stevenson & John Theobald (eds.), Relocating Germanness: Discursive disunity in unified Germany. London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 290. Hb $69.95.

Extract

Stevenson's & Theobald's volume, the outcome of a 1998 Southampton conference entitled Disunification: Competing constructions of contemporary Germany, is a rich and diverse collection of current sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic research into the German language. It aims to explore Germany's continued cultural and linguistic East/West divide, a decade after unification. The volume's 13 contributions are divided into two parts: critical discourse-analytic approaches to public discourses, and micro-analytic approaches to private or semi-public speech genres and communicative practices. The contributions in the first part are presented as “part of the analytical creation of … discourses” which seek to “punctur[e] the dominant western story, and by this very act, creating space for the expression of other memories, experiences and historiographies, and the emergence of alternative discourses” (p. 8). In contrast, the chapters in the second part have the more descriptive aim of documenting linguistic difference in East and West. The editors contend that “profound differences in communicative practices and behaviours between east and west Germans” exist, or are perceived to exist, and that these differences “constitute a significant barrier to the project of bringing a united … Germany into existence”.