Wortbildung und Polyphonie
Word Formation and Polyphony

Author(s): Claudia Wich-Reif
Subject(s): Language studies
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: word formation; composition; derivation; ad-hoc formation; polyphony
Summary/Abstract: Reading and analysing texts with a speaker/narrator who stages her/his texts as a dialogue (polyphony), provokes the question, if the speaker/narrator as the stage director characterizes her/his figures by specific word formations, or in other words, if it is possible for a reader to clearly identify polyphony by the use of word formations. The texts chosen for this analysis are Nora Gomringer’s story Recherche and excerpts from Dörte Hansen’s novel Altes Land, both published in 2015. Both texts are apt for comparison not only because of similar character-sets (e.g. one of the characters is a journalist), but also because of the permanent change between ‚written‘ language and dialogues. There is evidence that different figures use word formations in different frequencies, in the familiarity and the diversity of the respective formations. Whereas the derivations serve for mainly telling the story, the compositions serve additionally to compose convincingly rather ordinary or creative figures.

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