The observation of the individual’s heterogeneity is complementarily enriching traditional aggregate studies through intra-speaker designs both theoretically and methodologically. This represents a shift in focus from the collectivity of the community to the singularity of the individual. In addition to tracing sociolinguistic patterns of language development longitudinally, informants are now put under the microscope to atomistically observe their sociolinguistic behaviour on the basis of the social (a)symmetries between addressers and addressees. This paper shows results and conclusions on lifespan changes and style-shifting processes in late medieval England by applying contemporary models of intra-speaker variation to collections of historical private correspondence: the orthographic variable (th) in the Paston Letters (1425-1503). When the sociolinguistic behaviour of informants is observed in communicative interaction to see how they were experiencing a given change, patterns of style-shifting emerge, explaining their lifetime (ir)regularities and raising theoretical and methodological challenges for further inquiry.
Effective crisis communication entails being transparent about current uncertainties, whereas ignoring or hiding uncertainties can decrease public trust in the crisis management practices. Despite the increased interest in public crisis communication due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we still lack linguistic research on how uncertainties have been acknowledged by political leaders in their messages to the public. Therefore, our understanding of what works and what does not is limited. This study analyses how British PM Boris Johnson and US President Donald Trump expressed (un)certainty in their 2020 COVID-19 briefings. The findings show that both leaders expressed certainty more often than uncertainty, in particular at the beginning of the pandemic. I argue that their limited acknowledgement of uncertainty may have reduced public trust and hindered crisis management.
The author defended his doctoral dissertation Investigating the relationship between CLIL and L1 ability in a Finnish education context at the University of Turku, Faculty of Humanities, on 22 November 2025. Professor Tarja Nikula-Jäntti (University of Jyväskylä) acted as the opponent and Professor Minna Maijala (University of Turku) acted as the Custos. The dissertation is available at https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-02-0377-1.
Die Fachwelt kennt Jarmo Korhonen als einen international angesehenen finnischen Germanisten, der sich nicht nur auf seine Hauptforschungsgebiete Valenz-Syntax und Phraseologie konzentriert hat, sondern auch regen Anteil nimmt an der deutschen Sprachgeschichte vom Althochdeutschen bis zum Frühneuhochdeutschen, besonders zu Luther. Jarmo Korhonen dürfen wir deshalb anlässlich der Vollendung seines achten Dezenniums als einen germanischen Philologen hohen Ranges ehren und ihm aus diesem Anlass einige Gedanken zum Schnittbereich der althochdeutschen Syntax und Textgrammatik widmen. Es geht darin um die Klärung der Frage, wie von Otfrid von Weißenburg in der aus der deutschen Literaturgeschichte herausragenden Dichtung die Parenthese formal gestaltete und funktional einsetzte.
Typologically, indefinite articles develop from the numeral one, a process that was also observed in English during the transition from Old to Middle English. While significant research has been conducted on said emergence (e.g. Hewson 1997; Crisma 2015), the specific functions of this new grammatical category have received limited attention. This paper investigates the functions and development of the indefinite article in Middle English as part of a larger comparative study that also examines Middle High German texts. It is based on a qualitative approach and analyzes excerpts from three Middle English texts spanning different time periods. The analysis shows that the indefinite article assumed significantly different functions than the numeral one during the Middle English period. Most notably, it was used to mark generic as well as (non-)specific noun phrases from an early stage. Furthermore, the study underlines that the indefinite article occasionally assumes the function of marking abstract nouns. While this research is based on a focused sample, it lays the groundwork for future studies that can further explore the complexities of the indefinite article across a broader range of Middle English texts.
Die mantisch-prophetischen Unheilsträume Kriemhilds und Uotes im Nibelungenlied und Helches in der Rabenschlacht werden in der Mediävistik intensiv diskutiert, Parallelen in der Erzählweise erkannt, die nibelungische pessimistisch-fatalistische Grundstimmung der symbolisch verschlüsselten nächtlichen Bilder betont. Dennoch fehlen bislang systematisch-vergleichende Analysen zu den Traumerzählungen. Eine solche Analyse soll im Rahmen dieser Studie durchgeführt und mit Blick auf die Untersuchungsergebnisse erörtert werden, ob bzw. inwieweit diese literarischen Träume Merkmale aufweisen, die für heldenepische Untergangserzählungen als gattungsspezifisch gelten können. Dabei werden auch Parallelen zu den Träumen aus der Klage beleuchtet, v.a. aber Unterschiede zu Unheilsträumen in anderen Gattungen mittelhochdeutscher Versepik diskutiert, exemplarisch an einschlägigen Beispielen aus dem Rolandslied des Pfaffen Konrad, dem Orendel und dem Meier Helmbrecht von Wernher dem Gertenare. Mit Überlegungen zum Traum der Hecbua in Konrads Trojanischem Krieg und dem Drachentraum der Herzeloyde in Wolframs Parzival wird abschließend ein Ausblick zur weiteren Erforschung literarischer Träume in mittelhochdeutscher Versepik formuliert.
This paper focuses on how commercial Instagrammers display their associations with the Low German regional language in their posts. Previous studies on offline domains show that regional and minority languages are increasingly commodified. At the same time, e-commerce plays an important role in retail. However, until now, comparably little attention has been paid to the commercial use of regional and minority languages online. This paper analyses what commercial Instagrammers associate Low German with and how they employ these associations for marketing in their posts. A multimodal corpus of commercial Instagram posts was compiled using different Low German related hashtags, consisting of 1,157 posts by 86 Instagrammers. The data were analysed using a mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative analysis and employing methods of Qualitative Content Analysis and multimodal research grounded in Kress and van Leeuwen's visual grammar. This paper shows that the commercial Instagrammers in the study deliberately combine a limited and rather conservative and stereotypical repertoire of associations they hold with Low German circulating and strengthening common ideas of the language to promote their products. The Instagrammers reinforce the association of Low German with the seaside, especially, in their posts, also presenting their products in idyllic sceneries.
