Aptum, Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur 21. Jahrgang. 2025, Heft 3

Language regularly becomes the subject of public debate — examples from recent decades include discussions about spelling reform, loan words (especially from English) into German, the requirement to speak German in school playgrounds, traditional names for ethnic groups, and linguistic gender equality. There are at least three reasons why linguistically based language criticism receives little attention in these debates, which I will examine in this article: first, those involved in these debates, whether as debaters or as audience members, lack the linguistic knowledge to actually understand and evaluate such positions; second, the state of research within linguistics does not always correspond to what would be necessary to formulate such positions, or it is not sufficiently known within linguistics; third, linguists who participate in such debates often behave naively towards the ideological aspects involved. Linguistics as a field should strive to overcome these obstacles in order to be able to participate more actively in public debate.

The article justifies the inclusion of linguistically-based language criticism in discourses on colonial remembrance culture in the public sphere on the basis of street names. To this end, the current debate in Kiel about the existence of colonial street names is compared with trends in previous cross-city naming processes and discourses. The insights gained from this make it possible to advise on language and names for current and expected future renaming discourses, in which no preferences are expressed, but rather premises or implications are formulated.

Langenscheidt Verlag has been selecting the youth word of the year since 2008 and has replaced it with a three-stage process since 2020, which is intended to reflect the language use of young speakers. The study takes a critical look at the transparency and scientific basis of this selection process. The analysis shows that criteria such as degree of dissemination and originality are not clearly defined. A corpus analysis of youth words from the years 2020 to 2023 makes it clear that some of the award-winning terms are barely detectable in the corpora analysed. In addition, the methodological review of word usage in social networks remains opaque. The analysis of the Youth Word Choice 2024 also reveals critical discourses, particularly in connection with possible discriminatory or racist connotations of individual terms. These considerations show that the youth word choice should not primarily be seen as an empirically based linguistic survey, but rather as a strategic marketing measure by the publisher. The study concludes with a critical discussion of the authenticity of the youth word choice and the extent to which it actually reflects the active language use of young people.

In times of changing writing habits, orthography, as an emotional asset and means of distinction, continues to be highly valued. In this paper, we present an explorative diachronic journey through 30 years of spelling discourse – from the reform to generative AI – and show that the positionings towards orthography remain relatively constant. Whereas the intensity of the discourse varies over time, depending on particular discursive events, both the actors and topoi turn out to be recurrent.

In this article, I explore two issues: (1) how far participants in public discussions engage in language criticism when they hold other participants accountable for deviating from conversational norms and (2) to what extent it can be beneficial for linguistically based language criticism to examine such phenomena. Using a conversation analytic approach, this article investigates verbal actions in political TV talk shows with which the invited guests negatively sanction breaches of interactional norms and analyzes them as instances of language criticism in the public sphere. As the example analysis will show, such language-critical actions can serve the public presentation of oneself and others and the constitution of media personae.

This essay uses linguistic analysis to examine verbal aggression in posts by AfD politicians on the platform X. It identifies the semantic choices and pragmatic strategies that create aggressive effects. Using discourse analysis methods and speech act theory, it explores how these linguistic choices function as criticism, belittlement and provocation. While not explicitly illegal, many statements contain subtle forms of verbal aggression that contribute to the polarization and normalization of hate in public discourse. These findings emphasize the importance of linguistic analysis in understanding the role of political rhetoric in shaping societal attitudes and reinforcing power dynamics.

Terms with 'atom' and 'kern' stand in agonistic opposition as competing designations for the same phenomenon. This contribution provides a linguistic-critical classification of their usage in the Bundestag debates regarding the extension of nuclear power plant operations in 2022, where metalinguistic statements are also relevant. It became evident that the usage of the terms with 'kern' and 'atom' was almost uniform according to the respective position represented. Deviations occur when criticism is expressed towards the opposing position or the political opponent as such.