Politolinguistik und/oder Sprachkritik? Das Unbehagen in und an der Deskriptivität

In this article it is argued that a link between the analysis of political language use and language criticism exists. Nevertheless, there is disagreement as to how far the linguistic analysis of political language use should be critical or descriptive. The author of this article argues that the different approaches of lay linguistic criticism and critical discourse analysis are not convincing from a linguistic point of view. On the other hand, it is not disputed that linguistic analysis on a purely descriptive level is impossible. Particularly with regard to the euphemistic language use of the National Socialists in Germany, a purely descriptive analysis seems to be unsatisfactory. It is argued that linguistic discourse analysis allows to combine both – linguistic description and a critical view on political communication.