Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit dem Einsatz persuasiver, akzeptanzwerbender Mittel in politischen Reden, speziell in Texten von NPD-Rednern. Aufgrund des gegebenen politischen Kontexts lassen sich zwei konträre Tendenzen beobachten: das Bemühen um eine gewisse sprachliche Anpassung an das Sprachverhalten anderer Parteien und das gleichzeitige Insistieren auf einer Strategie der Abgrenzung und Polarisierung. Eine Analyse von Stellungnahmen zur Bildungspolitik soll dies konkretisieren.

Since about 20 years linguists attempt to apply the grammaticalisation concept to the description of pragmatic phenomena. In this context some linguists speak about ‘pragmatisation’ – a kind of language change, which concerns the linguistic codification of certain pragmatic contents. The term ‘pragmatisation’ suggests a new process, which runs in opposite direction to the development of grammatical elements. Irrespective of how we define the relation between both processes, this means always a reinterpretation (mostly extention) of the grammaticalisation concept. The present article focus on the question whether such attempts indeed result in a new insight into development of pragmatic units, or lead to terminological confusion by different terming already well described linguistic mechanisms.

The paper represents an attempt to find the inspiration for the discourse linguistics in the theory of thought collectives (Denkkollektiv) and thought styles (Denkstil) of Ludwik Fleck. In the first step the author presents the objectives and tasks of discourse linguistics. In the second step the author discusses the idea of thought styles (Denkstil) and their use for discourse linguistics.

The paper discusses the perspectives of intercultural linguistics as a new paradigm of German philology. Concepts of cultural standards are critizised and deficits of cultural contrastive analysis are demonstrated as shown by the example of code mixing. It is argued that interculturality is more than cultural contrastivity and more than transculturality and furthermore that for intercultural research the analysis of language is of utmost importance. Finally the paper demonstrates that in the central subject of intercultural communication it is worth while not only looking at misunderstandings but also at the different modes of linguistic politeness.

The last few decades, due to increasingly modern technologi­cal solutions, have brought about the possibility of more detailed and in-depth explorations of human brain functioning and its properties. In the first part of the present article, the characteristics of the object of research in linguistics are presented, and in the second, the possibilities of its exploration are described. Special attention was focused on the possibilities of using eye-tracking research in linguistics. Summing up the observations, it should be admitted that in order to make progress in linguistics and to be innovative, experimental research carried out using apparatus must be incorporated and started. However, it must be emphasized that this type of experimental research in linguistics, including obviously eye-tracking studies, is scientifically relevant only to the point that it really contributes to the creation of new knowledge or the verification of scientific knowledge gained earlier, and only if it contributes to the scientific exploration of the object of linguistics.