Mehr-, Viel- und Zweisprachigkeit in der deutschen Pressesprache der Habsburgermonarchie (1850– 1915) – korpusbasierte Begriffsbestimmungen
Multi-, Pluri- and Bilingualism in German Newspapers of the Habsburg Monarchy (1850 –1915) – Corpus-Based Definitions

Summary/Abstract: Multi-, pluri- and bilingualism have not only shaped the political discourse during the late Habsburg monarchy, they also remain the object of research in historical sociolinguistics and historiography. This paper seeks to supply contemporary usage-based definitions of the German equivalents of ‘multi-’, ‘pluri-’ and ‘bilingualism’ for such research. It does so by analyzing a keyword corpus built up from texts published in the Wiener Zeitung between 1850 and 1915. A central finding of this paper is that the terms in question did not refer to individuals or their language usage, as is the case in recent linguistics; but rather to regions, institutions, and their documents. In addition, the paper identifies discourse- pragmatic restrictions for the terms. For instance, the term ‘plurilingualism’ was used to represent the state unity of the Habsburg monarchy. Contrarily, ‘bilingualism’ was associated with (language‐)political conflicts.

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