Chair of German Linguistics

Links

• Department of German Studies
• DSW Secretariat
• DSW Academic Advisory Service
• FoMuR
• punc.space – punctuation network

What is linguistics?

German linguistics studies the contemporary and historical structures of the German language (systemic linguistics).

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In doing so, it examines on interrelated levels,

• sounds (phonetics/phonology)
• writing (graphy)
• word components (morphology)
• sentence structures (syntax)
• texts (text linguistics) in terms of their form and
• their meaning (semantics).

What linguistics achieves

German linguistics, as a sub-discipline of German studies, contributes to our understanding of language as a cultural medium.

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It examines the ways in which language is used in various communicative situations (pragmalinguistics), social contexts (sociolinguistics) and the media.

These findings benefit all disciplines that take language as their point of departure (e.g. law, history and theology, but also medicine and economics) or that investigate language from other or more general perspectives (e.g. speech science, media studies and general linguistics).