Colloquium: New Philologies (E-Journal)
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The Role of Errors in Validating a Large-Scale Assessment of Adolescent English Writing in Austria
Full text linkThis study investigates errors in a sample of 50 written performances of Austrian learners of English collected in the 2009 baseline study for the Austrian Educational Standards-Based Writing Test for English at grade 8 (E8 Standards Writing Test). The research aims to contribute to the validation of this large-scale assessment by studying the relationship between errors (described using the Scope – Substance error taxonomy) and human ratings awarded to writing performances. The results add to the validity evidence of the E8 Standards Writing Test. There is a negative relationship between human ratings and the presence of errors; a low error density is associated with higher ratings and a high error density with lower ratings. Substance word, clause, and text error densities play an important role in the rating in most dimensions; errors with a larger scope also have a strong effect. By highlighting aspects of errors to which raters seem to be sensitive, these findings constitute evidence of context validity. At the same time, the findings are relevant to theory-based validity by concretising areas of competence that learners need to develop in order to receive higher ratings. While errors are important determinants of the ratings, additional factors, presumably positive features, must be at play as the accuracy of the regression models is low to moderate. This should in fact be the case since the E8 rating scale refers to negative as well as positive features
At Home, at Mine (chez moi). Return to Oneself
Full text linkMy intention is to reconstruct three “relational notions” (Popper) – house, homeland, and nostalgia – in order to show the violent strategies that determine them and on which they depend. Nostalgia and the idea of returning to “oneself”, along with various protocols of affirmation of identity, birth, and dwelling, imply interruption of war and violence while also allowing for their possibility and renewal. The text affirms Clausewitz’s notion of friction and reveals its potential for any possible theory of peace
Von Lübeck zu Kaisersaschern. Die Wandlung in Thomas Manns Vorstellung von seiner geistigen Heimat
Full text linkThomas Mann did not produce any regional literature, despite his Buddenbrooks being a Lübeck novel. In the essay Bilse und ich (1906), he explains that Lübeck was used only as a material to which he assigned symbolic meaning for creating a work of art. However, in the essay Lübeck als geistige Lebensform (1926) Mann writes that Lübeck is the growing ground of his entire artistic work. Representing an ethical stance on life, it stands for Lebensbürgerlichkeit, i.e. a commitment to the responsibilities of life. This is in accordance with how Mann, in his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918), describes the Germans as being positioned in the “middle ground” where the demands of the intellect, or spirit (Geist), and the unconscious urges of life attain a balance. In Joseph und seine Brüder, rooted intellectually in the epoch of the Weimar Republic, the idea of Lebensbürgerlichkeit can be recognized in a biblical setting. However, in Doctor Faustus (1947), which mirrors the epoch of the Third Reich, it is Kaisersaschern, the protagonist’s (fictional) school town that represents the Germans’ intellectual-spiritual stance on life, which Mann now describes as an “antiquatedness of the soul”. In this “soul”, the irrational forces of life are uncontrollable. In the essay Deutschland und die Deutschen (1945), Mann describes Lübeck by quotations taken from the description of the medieval atmosphere of Kaisersaschern. Lübeck no longer represents the Lebensbürgerlichkeit but has become a representative of what is questionable (“demonic”) in the Germans
Heimat und Sprache: Überlegungen im Anschluss an Georg Misch
Full text linkThis text seeks to understand the concept of Heimat. I argue that it is not so much Heimat itself that needs to be examined but rather the subject area which in\-cludes objects such as Heimat. I develop this concept with the help of Georg Misch’s analytical tools. Heimat as an object shows itself in a specific form of speech -- „Evozieren“ (to evoke). Objects of evoking speech, like objects of practical knowledge, are subject to specific conditions of knowledge and speech that are tied to the individual experience of the speaker. This insight sheds new light on certain confusions of representational references in the discourses on Heimat
Perspektiven einer Qualitativen Stilometrie am Beispiel stilschichtig abgesenkter Lexeme
Full text linkHere we outline an approach to stylometry, which intends to be more comprehensive compared to classical stylistic metrics and its commonly used lexical frequency counts. As a prerequisite, such an approach needs language data as a basis for its stylistic analyses. In this paper, we describe the acquisition of two relevant resources: First, we depict collecting and preparing CodE Alltag, a German-language email corpus, which contains formal expressions as well as informal and personal interactions, and thus possesses a high stylistic variability. Envisaging the analysis of the vulgar, rough or obscene dimensions of style, we then detail inducing VulGer, a lexical resource covering the lower end of the German language register
„Daheim [...] war vielleicht noch Österreich“: Zur Inszenierung und Demontage des Heimat-Mythos in Joseph Roths Roman Radetzkymarsch
Full text linkJoseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch opens up a multifaceted historical horizon: By unfolding the fictional story of the Trotta family in the crisis-ridden final period of the Habsburg era, he exemplifies cultural diagnosis through individual fates. Starting with contemporary discourse on Austria, the essay analyses the significance of the Heimat myth in Roth’s Radetzkymarsch and its mediation alongside the hero myth, and the Kaiser myth. It examines the strategies the novel uses to satirically counteract these mythological configurations.
In the characters’ mentality, defeatism, resignation, and anticipations of doom – extending to apocalyptic visions – are combined with regressive nostalgia for fantasies of home, and ironic scepticism. The result is a revealing panorama of heterogeneous sensitivities in a sociopsychological context. The portrait of the hero of Solferino, who once saved the emperor’s life and through his portrait remains ever-present in the lives of his descendants, has a leitmotif function: Although the obsession with ancestors in the hero myth offers orientation and support to the hero’s son and grandson, it also negatively affects their identity formation. However, it is not only the subject who is affected by the loss of inner stability in the final period of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy before the First World War. Without illusion, the novel radically shows symptoms of a diffusion of consciousness in the aged Emperor Franz Joseph I himself, rendering him unsuitable as a fatherly authority of reassuring sovereignty and strength – despite all the representative staging.
The essay examines the novel’s tense web of motifs by analysing the strategies of ironic dismantling that emerge in the oscillation between myth-making and demythologising. Aspects of rhetorical design are also taken into account, as they significantly contribute to the aesthetics of Roth’s epoch novel
Das Wesen der Heimat nach Kurt Stavenhagen
Full text linkThe aim of the paper is to reconstruct the main premises of the notion of “homeland” as analyzed by Kurt Stavenhagen, the significant Latvian-German philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century. The paper points out the differences in Stavenhagen’s approach to the notion of homeland between the first and second edition of his study, Heimat als Grundlage menschlicher Existenz (Homeland as the Basis of Human Existence) from 1939 and Heimat als Lebenssinn (Homeland as the Meaning of Life) from 1948. The paper informs about the biographical and political background of Stavenhagen’s analysis and argues that his philosophical thought belongs to the so-called phenomenological movement. The thesis of the paper is that Stavenhagen’s definition of the homeland as a kind of community presupposes Ferdinand Tönnies’ distinction between community and society, which was fundamental for German sociology of that time. The author argues that Stavenhagen follows Max Scheler’s ideological misinterpretation of Tönnies’ distinction in his “war writings” in that he contrasts two types of sociality: authentic and unauthentic. These types are characteristic for German and Anglo-American social relations, respectively. In this light, Stavenhagen’s analysis turns out to be not so much a phenomenology but rather a mythology of the homeland. In reference to Leszek Kołakowski’s book The Presence of Myth (1984), the paper presents the need for answering to the “phenomenon of the indifference of the world” as a proper meaning of Stavenhagen’s mythology
Heideggers unheimliche Heimat: Bemerkungen zum Zusammengehören von Denken und Sein
Full text linkMartin Heidegger has been labeled the philosopher of “home” (Heimat) and “homelessness” (Heimatlosigkeit). But he is also the philosopher of “the uncanny” (das Unheimliche). The present paper first explores the uncanniness provoked by anxiety as Heidegger describes it in Being and Time. It then shows how this uncanniness is based on the relationship between thinking and being, as already described by Parmenides and exemplified by Heidegger in his interpretation of the first chorus in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. Heidegger shows that the uncanny in the relationship between thinking and being, i.e. between “Humanity” and “Being”, is not based in their difference but their identity. Humans, understood as “being-there” (Da-sein), have to cope with the fact that they have to disclose in their actions – be it thinking, writing poetry or fabricating – the essence of Being, which consists in being the autonomous appearing of beings. Thus, humanity has to accept the uncanniness of not being the independent subject dominating Earth, but a part of evolving nature itself
Der Mythos ,Heimat‘ in der politischen Philosophie Iwan Iljins
Full text linkThe purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the concept “Heimat” (Rodina) on the basis of Iwan Iljin’s works The Way of Spiritual Renewal (1937), Homeland and We (1925), and About Russia – Three Lectures (1934). The paper demonstrates that this concept plays a key role in Iljin’s political philosophy. “Heimat” serves as a systematic centre which unites various themes of human life, such as family, community, state, and international affairs. It is also necessary for human self-identification.
Iljin’s notion of “Heimat” is not easy to interpret and this is one of the reasons why he is often accused of nationalism and conservatism. However, this is not correct since Iljin distinguishes between the instinctive drive to homeland and the spiritual homeland. The spiritual homeland does not require any localization in space or time; it does not designate any material objects and only exists in the imagination. Iljin’s homeland seems to be a myth having an educational function. The most important characteristics of the myth “Heimat” are the focus of this paper’s analysis