Linguistic means of “new ethical” principles representation in modern German poetic discourse

Abstract

The study aims to identify the linguistic means of “new ethics” explication, which is a symbiosis of honor, dignity, victimhood cultures transposed into modern German poetic discourse. The study is novel in that it is the first to determine and analyze the main groups of German poems created in the first quarter of the 21st century, which illustrate the specifics of the “new ethics”. As a result, the study showed that the concept of “new ethics” involves a rethinking of basic ethical norms, which is confirmed by the updating of its principles in German poetic discourse based on five fundamental areas: detabooing topics, i.e., bringing private topics (sex, health status during the coronavirus infection) into public space, harassment reframing, various forms of discrimination, Internet communication (on the Zoom platform), environmental problems. The analyzed material revealed that the main markers of the linguistic implementation of these principles are chains of key lexemes with the specific semantics, polar oppositions, semantic parallelism.