Linguistische Widerspruchsforschung
Be it antonymic semantic contrasts, syntactic incompatibility relations, ironically self-contradictory statements or communicative protest practices, the topic of contradiction has always been of interest to linguistic research. Although the question raised by Acke and Warnke (2018) as to whether contradiction is a linguistic subject has since been answered with a clear yes in various works (cf. Nintemann & Stroh 2022) and contradiction has also been dealt with linguistically in various works before that (cf. Spranz-Fogasy 1986), the research to date is largely disparate. Thus, contrary to the clear relevance of contradiction for linguistic analyses and the broad interest in contradiction-related topics, it can be observed that previous research is largely sub-disciplinary in orientation and sometimes there can be no talk of systematic contradiction research or even a linguistic theory of contradiction. In my presentation, I would like to argue that the still young discipline of Contradiction Studies (cf. Febel et al. 2023) can, on the one hand, provide a framework for bringing together linguistic interests in the topic of contradiction in a meaningful way and, on the other hand, enable an interdisciplinary connection for linguistic research. In this regard, I would like to disambiguate the vague term ‘contradiction’ and use different readings to show which phenomena with an affinity for contradiction linguistics has sometimes dealt with and how it is possible to build bridges between these areas. In doing so, I would like to refer to my own research on liturgical language practices in church services from a discourse and religious linguistic perspective. The issue of contradiction is relevant here insofar as my research is dedicated to the question of how queer Christian identities are made visible in church services and what tensions arise with conservative and heteronormative ideas of language and religiosity in church contexts.
At the 15. Nordwestdeutsches Linguistischen Kolloquium (NWDLK)