SPIEGEL:
Why are we actually screaming "as if on a skewer"?
Roth:
In earlier times, victims were actually impaled with lances, i.e. spears.
The atrocities of war have been an everyday experience for humans for thousands of years.
The war has therefore always shaped our language.
SPIEGEL:
And today?
Roth:
Today we "defend" positions, "attack" each other, "concede defeat."
It's not just language.
Cognitive metaphor theory has shown us that we think in these terms.
But basically that's not a problem as long as we don't actually strike.
Think of what takes place in the football stadiums every weekend and where attack and defence, victory and defeat are also a matter of course.
SPIEGEL:
Is a war more likely to be won with weapons or with words?
Roth:
Language is a weapon, says Tucholsky.
We need to break away from the everyday notion that language is a tool with which we exchange information or describe the world.
Language constructs reality.
Putin does this, for example, with the ban on calling a war a war in Russia.
This is a wonderful illustration of what Orwell described as "Newspeak" in his novel 1984.
SPIEGEL:
Does this war in Ukraine also affect our language?
Roth:
Heroism and courage were not typical motives of political language in the Federal Republic.
That has changed.
In the reporting, the military actions and successes of the Ukrainians are very often told in the narrative of the heroic David fighting Goliath.
SPIEGEL:
Is that propaganda?
Roth:
It's influence.
Especially in democracies, politics, even in war, is completely dependent on asserting its interests through language.
In a dictatorship like Putin's Russia, on the other hand, language is only an accessory, because politics is enforced there by force.
To me, it is precisely this physical violence that constitutes propaganda.
Where counter-speech is possible, influencing is unproblematic.
Professor Kersten Roth, 49, is a linguist and head of the Center for Linguistic Societal Research in Magdeburg.
JST