Gewalt der Sprache: Lexikalische Abwertung als (Ab)Bild einer Sprachgemeinschaft

The focus of this paper is on pejoratives, i. e. on lexical units of the negative evaluative type. Departing from the assumption that the study of negative evaluation offers an insight into hu-man nature, we shall here analyse the process of negative evaluation (the process of pejoriza-tion), as well as the result of that process (pejoratives themselves). The analysis is conducted on currently available research – both traditional and cognitive linguistic – as well as on the corpus that has been obtained from both scholarly articles as well as dictionaries. The basis of the corpus is represented by pejoratives used to address people, found in German dictionaries. In order to test the (universal) status and the limits of the conceptual status of the pejoratives themselves, we have analysed the corpus also at the cross linguistic level, comparing and contrasting the German examples with equivalent English examples

Pogledaj ovo ,,ovdje”: od fizički do pragmatički proksimalnoga u engleskome, njemačkome i hrvatskome

Departing from the well-known ontological parallel between the pointing gesture on the one hand, and linguistic deixis on the other, in this paper we analyse the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of the deictic terms ‘here’ in English, ‘hier’ in German and ‘ovdje’ in Croatian. We systematize the different usages of these terms – both intra- and cross-linguistically – and propose a reading of the semantics of the proximal deictic element for \u27linguistic spatial location\u27, which – as our analysis shows – ranges from the pure spatial locational function, via a temporal – more generally metaphorical segment - all the way to a series of discourse functions. We observe that the universality of usage patterns that is found at the spatial, and even spatio-temporal level, can still be found – albeit to a lesser degree – at the discourse level. What seems to be maintained at all levels is the primacy of the proximal segment in terms of referential prominence. We thus conclude that what physical proximity is in the spatial sense, can largely be understood as pragmatic proximity in the linguistic sense.Polazeći od dobro poznate ontološke paralele između pokazne geste s jedne te jezične deikse s druge strane, u ovome radu analiziramo semantičku i pragmatičku dimenziju deiktičkih riječi ,,here“ u engleskome, ,,hier“ u njemačkome, te ,,ovdje“ u hrvatskome jeziku. Pokušali smo sistematizirati različite uporabe navedenih termina – međujezično i unutarjezično – te ponuditi semantičko čitanje proksimalnoga elementa “jezičnog prostornog lociranja“. Rezultati naše analize upućuju na zaključak da navedeno čitanje kreće od prostorne komponente, prelazi na vremensku da bi se potom metaforička lepeza čitanja razvila kroz seriju diskurzivnih funkcija. Jezičnu univerzalnost pri tome nalazimo ne samo na prostornoj odnosno prostornovremenskoj osi, već – u nešto manjem opsegu – i u diskurzivnome segmentu. Na svim razinama proksimalnost vezujemo uz referencijalnu prominentnost. Zaključno konstatiramo da fizičku prominentnost u prostornoj domeni možemo usporediti s pragmatičkom prominentnošću u širemu jezikoslovnom smislu odnosno jezičnoj uporabi