Staff research projects

The Great American Scaffold – Intertextuality and Identity in U.S. Presidential Discourse
Frank Austermuehl

This study proposes an approach to the analysis of U.S. presidential discourse from both an intercultural and intertextual perspective. As a cultural and intercultural phenomenon, presidential discourse is seen as an identity-creating usage of language. Exercised within the politically powerful and culturally constructive institution of the American presidency, this discourse is considered decisive in the definition of standardized auto and hetero images of both the American president and the American presidency as well as constitutive of American political ideology and cultural identity.

The objective of this study is twofold: Firstly, we aim at identifying and describing the various forms of intertextuality occurring in U.S. presidential discourse. Secondly, we aim at identifying and describing the pragmatic functions connected with these various levels of intertextuality and with presidential discourse.

Scheduled for publication in 2011.

DOAP – An English-German Dictionary of American Politics
Frank Austermuehl

DOAP is explicitly designed not only as a passive, decoding reference work but also as an active one for numerous text production purposes.

The target group is composed of journalists and translators as well as scholars and students from political science, cultural studies and history. The dictionary aims at providing these users with a standardized, culturally in-depth and precise description of US political terms and their equivalents in German.

Special emphasis will be placed in providing translation solutions, on both the lexical and phraseological level, that can be directly integrated into German texts–what Joachim Mugdan calls "die Einsetzbarkeit im Text."

DOAP is scheduled for publication in 2012.