Bettelsprache, höflich-derb. Einige Bemerkungen zum semantischen Doppler-Effekt
Beggar-Language, polite and coarse. A few comments on the semantic Doppler effect

Summary/Abstract: Being a medium of presumably high-sensitive reflection on social life especially in its most conflicting situations, literary works dealing with beggar figures are supposed to documenthow mentality has shifted in their perception or in the presentation of their speech as it wasuttered, hoarded, and handed down during centuries of exclusion and marginalisation. However,the linguistic phenomenon itself, i.e., the way in which beggars accomplish their task at theintersection with a rather hurried public, is a domain which is not yet thoroughly studied, thestandard statements of the social sciences being largely insufficient. One needs to develop newinterpretative strategies, and the syntagm ‘semantic Doppler effect’ should satisfy this need. Itemulates the well-known acoustic effect in such a way, that begging formulas—initially perceivedas polite –tend to be subject to a mutation immediately after they fade out, as many recipients ofsuch speech acts can witness. The question arises as to where this mutation takes place, whether itis in the signal itself, in the intention of the speaker already, or whether it does not emerge until theauditor has re-coded it.

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