Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 363
Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Manifestations of Confidential Language Instructions in the German Press: The Berlin Olympic Games 1936
Authors: Barbe, Katharina
Submitted by: Barbe, Katharina (Northern Illinois University, United States of America)
Confidential language instructions (LIs), first issued by the Nazi regime in June 1933 are evaluated using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which seeks to investigate how “texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power” (Fairclough 1995). Shortly after their ascension to power, the Nazis limited press freedom through several decrees and laws, and “access to media is a power resource, so if people can be persuaded, their later actions can be indirectly influenced” (vanDijk 2003). LIs (Presseanweisungen) were communicated during daily press conferences attended by a select group of journalists whose task was to incorporate this information into the respective papers. Under the threat of retribution, journalists were ordered to treat their handwritten notes as confidential and to destroy them regularly. LIs are available today only because some ignored these instructions. Through LIs, the regime and its representatives attempted to influence the news and news reporting, and, by extension, public opinion. In particular, because of implicitly and explicitly threatened repercussions, LIs amounted to pre-publication censorship. The propaganda machine thus used established structures and subverted them for its aims. Readers chose newspapers on the basis of their own political leanings; their expectations that a variety of ideologies was realized through a variety of papers were exploited.
The LIs are parts in a verifiable chain of texts (Fairclough 2003). The propaganda needs were conceived by government leaders and communicated to a deputy who dealt with the press. The deputy conveyed the requirements, usually orally, to chosen reporters who wrote down the instructions, often in shorthand. After the press conference, the reporters transcribed and/or rewrote their notes in order to share them with others in their respective papers. Per directive, LIs were supposed to be implemented to conform to each paper’s individual style and to, thus, mask their origin. Readers, the target group of the articles, were many steps removed from the original instructions.
In this presentation, I will focus on language instructions s and their reflections in a variety of newspapers at the time of the Berlin Olympic Summer Games in 1936. Many foreign guests visited Berlin, and the propaganda ministry was worried about the press’s continual negative depiction not only of allies like Japan but also of other countries that took part in the Olympic Games. Newspapers were instructed to refrain from attacking foreign customs and habits, to emphasize Germany’s cosmopolitanism, and to maintain that Germany recognized value in all races. I argue here that the repeated instructions document the fact that the espoused Nazi racial ideology had fallen on fertile ground in Germany and that, all denials to the contrary, these repeated instructions can be seen as evidence for the identification with and support of Nazi ideology. In essence, the unacceptable articles followed Nazi ideology and ideas about race: the general view of the “other” was carried out in racial terms.