East-West Conflicts. Interdisciplinary perspectives on the discourse on Germany and the world

"What makes East Germans tick when it comes to Russia? Why is there often a greater closeness to Russia here? And what does this tell us about rifts that still exist in the German population more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall?"[1]; "Don't we have enough to contend with in the East in particular, with a rugged landscape after Pegida, refugee haters, dissenting total deniers and vaccination warriors?"[2] - Statements like these, especially in the context of the Ukraine war, take the difference between East and West Germans long after reunification for granted and show how stubbornly persistent discursive patterns such as the topical staircase [3] (Roth 2008) are: 'The East' is homogenizingly characterized as a deviation, as something deficient and burdensome. Thus, on the (tacitly assumed) basis that there is still a (clear) difference between East and West, certain social phenomena in the mass media discourse - such as right-wing populism (e.g. in the context of the AfD), hatred of refugees, the lateral thinking movement (which started with Querdenken 0711 in Stuttgart and in very typical West German milieus) and "Putin-Versteherei" - are not perceived and discussed as West Germanproblems, but primarily as  East German problems.

Although examples such as these are only the tip of the iceberg and the topic is therefore omnipresent in the media and politically, German political language research has been blind to East-West issues for some time: The linguistic relations between East and West Germany were one of the most significant subjects in the times of state division since 1949, with the events of 1989/90 providing a second research highlight. After that, the topic largely disappeared from the subject's agenda and the conference on "Discourse Walls" organized by the working group "Language in Politics" in 2006 (cf. Roth/Wienen 2008) can be regarded as the last major linguistic survey of the topic.

The interdisciplinary conference addresses this research deficit. It understands the East-West discourse as a cross-sectional discourse that is fundamentally present even where it is ostensibly about other topics (e.g. the consequences of Corona or the fight against man-made climate change, which is apparently perceived as differently urgent in East and West Germany).

It is primarily aimed at the specialist communities of the participating disciplines, i.e. German studies, (theological) sociology, political, social, media and communication studies, but is not only open to students and university members, but also expressly open to the public after registration.

If you would like to attend the conference, please register by 18.02.2023at the latest  using the form below.

^References

^{[1] www.ardmediathek.de/video/dokus-im-ersten/russland-putin-und-wir-ostdeutsche/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL3JlcG9ydGFnZSBfIGRva3VtZW50YXRpb24gaW0gZXJzdGVuLzZhY2YyNjMxLTNkNzAtNDk0MS1iZjAzLWY5NDQ3ZTA2ODg0ZQ (last accessed on 08.12.2022)}

^{[2] taz.de/Putin-Fans-in-Ostdeutschland/!5836638/, 10.03.2022 (last accessed on 08.12.2022).}

^{[3] Roth, Kersten Sven (2008): The West as 'Normal Zero'. On the discourse semantics of 'East German*' and 'West German*'. In: Roth, Kersten Sven/Wienen, Markus (eds.): Diskursmauern. Current aspects of linguistic relations between East and West. Bremen, pp. 69-89.}