Exploring the Discursive Construction of Obedience: An Analysis of Application Letters for the Position of Executioner in Hitler’s Germany-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Exploring the Discursive Construction of Obedience: An Analysis of Application Letters for the Position of Executioner in Hitler’s Germany

Published:2021-02-10 Issue: Volume: Page:
ISSN:0952-8059
Container-title:International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique
language:en
Short-container-title:Int J Semiot Law

Author:

Leisser Daniel^ORCID,Bray Katie,Hernández Anaruth,Nasr Doha

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents an empirical investigation into the construction of obedience in letters of applications mailed to National Socialist authorities for the position of executioner between the years 1933 and 1945. To this end, a corpus of 178 letters of application was compiled, annotated, and analyzed using the corpus analysis toolkits Antconc and Lancsbox. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus was conducted. The findings were related to and interpreted from the perspectives of applied legal linguistics, stylistics, and legal history. The project aims to explore the construction of a shared discourse of obedience and how this discourse is operative in the letters of application. Drawing on an explorative interdisciplinary framework, this project seeks to answer the following research questions: Is obedience a construct in applicants’ letters of motivation? Which linguistic devices and discursive strategies are used by the executioners to express submission to officials of the National Socialist state? Are there variants of the construction of submission by applicants?

Funder

University of Vienna

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Subject

Law,Language and Linguistics

Link

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11196-020-09808-4.pdf

Reference56 articles.

1. Adorno, Theodor W., E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.J. Levinson, and R.N. Sanford. 1950. The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row.

2. Andersen, Gisle. 2012. How to use corpus linguistics in sociolinguistics. In The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics, ed. Anne O'Keeffe, and Michael McCarthy, 547–563. London: Routledge.

3. Bhatia, Vijay K. 1993. Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman.

4. Birch, David. 1989. Language, literature, and critical practice: Ways of analysing text. London: Routledge.

5. Brockhaus, F. A., ed. 1941. Der Neue Brockhaus: Allbuch in vier Bänden und einem Atlas. Zweiter Band F-K. Leipzig: Brockhaus Leipzig.

Cited by 2 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. The Discursive Construction of Antisemitism in Nazi Children’s Books: Elvira Bauer’s Trust No Fox (1936) and Ernst Hiemer’s The Poisonous Mushroom (1938);International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique;2023-08-12

2. Discourses of discrimination in Austrian criminal law;Diversity and Inclusion across languages;2023