Zeitgenössische Gesellschaft und ihre Ängste. Zur sprachlichen Re-Inszenierung des Katastrophischen in Kathrin Rögglas Prosaband die alarmbereiten

Abstract

Contemporary society and its fears. On the linguistic restaging of the narration of catastrophe in Kathrin Röggla’s prose work die alarmbereiten

In her prose work die alarmbereiten, a critical language analysis from 2010, Kathrin Röggla examines “the grammar of catastrophe” which is a dominant pattern in the contemporary perception of reality. The narration of catastrophe and crisis constitutes — as convincingly proven by Röggla’s work — trajectories of equally a collective-public and an individual-private experience of the world. This paper examines the common communicative patterns, rhetoric and gestures in the public and private discourse on catastrophes and crises. The purpose of the paper is to present the discursive mechanisms of power hiding behind the facade of the omnipresent “being on the alert” Ger. Die Alarmbereitschaft.