The project continues the work of the project “Linguistic strategies of knowledge and science communication in text types and media formats for children”. While primarily explanatory texts such as non-fiction books/magazines, TV knowledge magazines and children's university lectures were analyzed for their knowledge transfer strategies, the focus is now on fictional and thus primarily narrative children's and youth literature. Using the example of ecological topics of environmental, nature and climate protection, the question is how knowledge is 'told' and possibly explained. The object of investigation are fictional narratives with factual (ecology-related) content from the years 2019-2023 for children aged 6-12. The initial hypothesis of the project is that in ecological fiction for children and young people there is a particular tension between narration (offered as a story) and explication (explanation of ecological knowledge). However, this is not dichotomous, but polar and allows for the integration of both types of unfolding as well as the embedding of further text patterns (e.g. description, instruction, argumentation). The aim of this continuation project is to develop an integrative linguistic analysis model that is suitable for both non-fiction and fiction texts as well as for various media formats. Popularization strategies and explanatory ambition, comprehensibility dimensions and text/image/language aesthetics as well as forms of so-called identity navigation (e.g. in the development of characters, offer of role models or other offers of identification) are to be included here with a view to fiction texts.

Project-Team: Prof. Dr. Nina Janich & Corinna Lüdicke (PhD) with Caroline Süptitz & Julia Höpfner (students)

In Cooperation with: Prof. Dr. Jan Engberg (Aarhus), Prof. Dr. Gerhard Lauer (Mainz). Prof. Dr. Thomas Boyken (Oldenburg), apl. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Meyer (Vechta), Dr. Jana Mikota (Siegen)

Whether science can solve society's most urgent problems has been the subject of increasingly heated debate – especially since the Covid 19 pandemic. In the process, the tone has intensified, society is perceived as polarized, and conflicts seem unsolvable. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to facilitate successful communication about social problems for which scientific expertise is needed – especially across different interests, knowledge resources, and socialisations. Numerous scientists therefore contribute to the public debate, by communicating, e.g., via science blogs, which allow to exchange ideas broadly and publicly and make it possible to include citizens with different prior knowledge in the discourse. Comments on blogposts by scientists and science journalists, as they are available in abundance and thematic breadth on the portal “SciLogs – Diaries of Science” (Spektrum), show that processes of negotiation of expertise take place constantly, and by no means only factually. Conflicts arise here because of different expectations of professional, media and social roles and associated communicative practices, but also because there is a lack of mutual understanding of the different positions and perspectives in various role constellations, e.g., in the expert-layman spectrum. Empathy is thus a problem factor. The project goal project is the linguistic operationalisation of empathy phenomena in systematic connection with the concept of expectation and reciprocal expectation of expectations. This is done in the course of a sociopragmatic in-depth analysis of practices of understanding that serve to negotiate expertise in the comment section of science blogs from SciLogs. They are to be made systematically describable through qualitative text
annotation and the corpus linguistic detection of corresponding linguistic patterns. The robustness of the hypothesis- and corpusdriven categories and indicators will be tested for validity and transferability using data-driven algorithmic methods and various
reference corpora. Finally, discourse-linguistic insights into the dynamics and change of understanding practices under the transformational influence of social crises such as the Covid 19 pandemic are to be gained using the example of the climate change
discourse, which is disproportionately represented in the corpus. A special focus of this discourse and corpus linguistics project, which works with a mixed-methods approach, is on which practices are decisive for success or failure in understanding and which discursive moments in the commentary processes represent sensitive tipping
points.

Team of the cooperative project:

Prof. Dr. Nina Janich & Tobias Krauß, M.A. (TU Darmstadt)
Dr. Michael Bender, Leon Schnaut & Dieter Kessler (TU Darmstadt)
Prof. Dr. Noah Bubenhofer & Gunilla Kaibel, M.A. (University of Zurich)

Please visit our project website eee-sciencedebates.digital

Publications:

Bender, Michael/Bubenhofer, Noah/Janich, Nina (2024): Die öffentliche Aushandlung von Expertise: Wissenschaftsblogs als Ort eristischer Verständigung? Exploratorischer Einstieg in ein Forschungsprojekt. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik (ZGL) 52 (1), 183-211. Special Issue „Digitale Öffentlichkeit(en). Linguistische Perspektiven“, hg. von Marie-Luis Merten und Daniel Knuchel. Open Access. DOI: 10.1515/zgl-2024-2008

The project is a sub-project of the interdisciplinary joint project “Sustainable forest nature conservation – sustainable forest communication” (spokesperson: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Nadja Simons, University of Würzburg) (funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag, 2023-2026)

About the research interest of the joint project: The forest has increasingly become the focus of public interest, and not just since the media successes of forester Peter Wohlleben. Media coverage and the dramatic drought-induced forest dieback show that sustainable forest (nature) conservation is increasingly becoming an important political issue. At the same time, the most diverse interests and attitudes of climate policy and science, biodiversity research, nature conservation associations and forestry are competing and often lead to conflicting goals. However, we also see potential synergies here, which is why we will be working on the following questions, among others, in close cooperation between the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities: What significance do climate and biodiversity protection have in forests, how are conflicting interests negotiated communicatively and what are the consequences for social judgment and action and political decision-making? How dynamic are forest nature conservation and forest nature conservation communication in Germany in recent years in view of the increasing drying out of entire forest areas due to the heat waves and droughts of recent summers? The aim of the project is to make an interdisciplinary and application-oriented contribution to understanding the sustainable use of forests through sustainable communication and to make a constructive contribution to this dual sustainability.

Project team of the interdisciplinary joint project:

Junior-Prof. Dr. Nadja Simons, University of Würzburg (Biocenter/Applied Biodiversity Research and spokesperson of the joint project) with Julian Lunow, M.A.

Prof. Dr. Nico Blüthgen, TU Darmstadt (Department of Biology, Ecological Networks)

Prof. Dr. Nina Janich, TU Darmstadt (Department of Social and Historical Sciences, Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies/Applied Linguistics), with Dr. Lisa Rhein and Charlotte Dornauf

Prof. Dr. Markus Lederer, TU Darmstadt (Department of Social and Historical Sciences, Institute of Political Science/International Relations), with Dorothea Schoppek, M.A., and Michel Siebert

Please also visit our project page walddiskurs

The subproject is part of the DFG Research Group “Controversial discourses: Language history as contemporary history since 1990” (spokesperson Prof. Dr. Martin Wengeler, Trier)

The subproject is intended to contribute to the substantive goal of the research group “Controversial Discourses” to write a narrative discourse history of Germany since 1990 by looking first at German environmental discourse (first funding phase) and then at German educational discourse (second funding phase). The initial hypothesis of the subproject to be tested is that environmental and educational discourse are particularly shaped by the question of individual vs. societal responsibility in relation to everyday decision-making and action: Environment and education affect every individual erveryday and at the same time are to be shaped in a sustainable way, including through responsible consumer action, for a future that is not directly observable. In this context, from the point of view of the individual, the space for self-determination and self-efficacy is, at least perceived, to be restricted, while from the point of view of society, it is precisely this restriction that is understood as an individual contribution to responsible and sustainable development. For the sake of a clearer
focus, the two discourses will therefore be understood as partly interrelated strands of the discourse on sustainable development, which is chronologically framed by Agenda 21 of 1992 and Agenda 2030 of 2015. Topic strands to be investigated will therefore equally refer to resource consumption and resource protection and corresponding attributions of responsibility. In order to identify commonalities, differences, and entanglements between the two fields of discourse with regard to the cultural governance of individual decisions for sustainable action, the project focuses on the question of images of nature, environmental practices, and related consumer
stereotypes. As in all of the research group's subprojects, the project will work with the research group's diachronic core corpus (Bundestag protocols and various leading media since 1990). For the first funding phase with the focus on environmental discourse. A complementary case study on product packaging will show how the central topics of the German environmental discourse are currently reflected in consumer communication. The methodological goal of the research group, to bring together discourse linguistic categories and digital annotation in a collaborative way, to expand them systematically, and to evaluate them with regard to the transparency and intersubjectivity of hermeneutic interpretation processes, will be achieved in the project by analyzing, among other things, controversial buzzwords and
keywords, attributions of roles and responsibilities, images of nature used for argumentative purposes, and the evaluation of environmental practices.

Projektteam

Principal Investigators
Prof. Dr. Nina Janich, Technische Universität Darmstadt (spokesperson phase 1)
Prof. Dr. Jörg Kilian, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (prospective spokesperson phase 2)

PhD
Patrick Johnson, M.A. (Darmstadt)

Students
Helena Henkel & Zoe Nicolai (TU Darmstadt)
Torge Hinrichsen (CAU Kiel)

Please visit also our project website with our publications.

The aim of this project is to close a conspicuous gap in the research on scientific policy advice. The latter has been, and continues to be, a frequent object above all of various social sciences. It is therefore all the more surprising that up to now there are hardly any linguistic and epistemological text analyses of policy advice. The main hypothesis underlying the project is that science, through a double, epistemic and legitimizing function of its advisory services, is fundamentally confronted with the dilemma of having to maintain scientific credibility and develop political effectiveness at the same time, and that this dilemma is aggravated or defused in different ways depending on the underlying mutual expectations of roles and responsibilities. The project is therefore interested in how the current practice of scientific policy advice in Germany can be more precisely determined linguistically and epistemologically in terms of form, content and function, and how the struggle for epistemic quality and social legitimacy is reflected. The analyses are conducted in relation to two issues that serve as examples, namely, bioenergy and water pollution. The corpus consists of texts of selected German institutions of scientific policy advisory, published within the last twenty years.

The idea behind this is to offer a robust interdisciplinary contribution to the longstanding and ongoing debate within the scientific community regarding science’s responsibility in the face of societal challenges and the communication of its insights. The critical self-reflection enabled by this with regard to the language and practices of science is intended as an indirect contribution toward the public legitimation of science as a democratic institution.

Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Nina Janich (Technical University of Darmstadt) and Prof. Dr. Armin Grunwald (ITAS/KIT Karlsruhe)

What has been referred to as the “Corona crisis” in Germany and Europe since March 2020 consists, on closer inspection, of several closely interwoven crises (epidemiological-medical, social, political, economic). In addition to all these problematic dimensions, the pandemic also confronts societies with completely new communicative challenges: Actor groups in politics, (natural) science and mass media are forced to act in a highly collaborative way to cope with the acute challenges. They share the task of communicating core messages to the democratic-pluralistic citizenry with as much unanimity as possible, despite all the scientific uncertainties – and possibly changing or exceeding their usual communicative tasks vis-à-vis society in the process. This requires a degree of cooperation that has so far not corresponded to the everyday life of these groups of actors, and the citizenry is not used to such cooperation either.

Against this background, the aim of the project is to investigate processes of appropriation, instrumentalization and demarcation between politics and science in the Corona crisis against the background of their mediatization and with regard to their consequences for the legitimacy and credibility of science/scientific knowledge and politics/political action.

The project thus promises, on the one hand, practical short-term insights into current corona science communication and the precarious situation of those who leave the ivory tower consciously, but perhaps also too unprepared in view of the rough seas of political and media instrumentalizations. On the other hand, it offers long-term relevant results on science communication in the context of social crises, in which special epistemic, legitimizing and communicative challenges arise for all participants.

Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Kersten Sven Roth (Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg) and Prof. Dr. Nina Janich

Funded as part of the FEdA “Research Initiative for the Conservation of Biodiversity” on the topic of “Valuing and safeguarding biodiversity in politics, business and society” (BiodiWert).

In view of the ongoing extinction of insects and the increasing loss of biodiversity, various measures to promote biodiversity are currently being proposed, researched and implemented at different levels. In this context, the interdisciplinary BioDivKultur project is primarily dedicated to insect conservation on green spaces.
Species-rich grassland areas (meadows and pastures) are known to provide a habitat for many insects. However, there are also habitats in gardens, parks, green strips (field margins, roadsides) and commercial green spaces that are similar to grassland and can or could provide suitable habitats for a large number of insect species. The BioDivKultur project has therefore set itself the goal of looking at biodiversity-friendly design options for different types of green spaces against the background of different values towards 'nature'. In particular, the effectiveness of different protection strategies for insect diversity during mowing (mowing technique, frequency and timing) is to be investigated. The BioDivKultur project, in which biologists work together with humanities scholars and social scientists, together with the City of Darmstadt (Environmental and Green Space Office), the Bioversum Kranichstein and the Landscape Conservation Association Göttingen, is therefore dedicated to questions relating to usage interests, options for action and regulatory possibilities in the design and maintenance of green spaces. The interdisciplinary project team from science and practice aims to promote knowledge, acceptance and feasibility of more effective insect protection.

Project Team Applied Linguistics: Prof. Dr. Nina Janich & Johanna Freudenberg (Doktorandin) mit Alwine Hellmeier (studentische Hilfskraft).

For further members of the inter- and transdisciplinary project see our project website biodivkultur.

Today, a significant part of knowledge transfer takes place via media, which attempt to prepare factual and specialized information in an understandable and appealing way for a broad audience in a multitude of multimodal formats that can hardly be surveyed. New, interactive forms are constantly developing, particularly as a result of the dynamics of digitization. In recent years, media products that popularize knowledge have increasingly become the focus of multimodality research. This asks how different semiotic resources interact to generate meaning. However, a systematic survey of the multimodal design of knowledge formats beyond exemplary analyses is a desideratum – the international and interdisciplinary network is dedicated to this desideratum. The spokesperson is Dr. Sylvia Jaki, University of Hildesheim.

To the DFG network page

Currently, several societal debates show that science still has to explain, justify, and possibly even defend its credibility and its research practice time and again. In the scope of their research, scientists will inevitably encounter situations of not-yet-knowing, not knowing for sure, or not being able to know – but since research is generally presented as a story of success in public, it is not exactly easy to communicate uncertainties or knowledge gaps in the same way as clear research results. Therefore, the aim of this project is to enter discussions with researchers who are experienced in communicating via the media or in the public sphere – in order to identify possible communication problems, misunderstandings, but also examples of success, as a basis for determining critical communication situations. Science journalists are asked about their experiences in order to derive possible communication standards for critical situations. The evaluation of the interviews is underpinned by a linguistic analysis of written statements by scientists in the media. The aim is to provide young researchers in the natural sciences with experience-based support with regard to science communication.

In cooperation with the National Institute for Science Communication (Nationales Institut für Wissenschaftskommunikation, NaWiK, in Karlsruhe) and the Science Media Center Germany (SMC, Cologne)

Project staff

Maike Sänger, M.A.

At the latest since 2013, after the European Commission suspended the use of certain insecticides, the so-called neonicotinoids, on the basis of a scientific report (which it confirmed once again in 2018), there has been an dispute between the agricultural industry, environmental organizations, beekeepers' associations, political parties, and scientists about how harmful these substances really are. Usually, the individual actors tend to paint a picture that is influenced by their interests, strategies, and values.

In order to find out how different actors deal with scientific knowledge and related uncertainties or even non-knowledge in this context, we examine their way of speaking and the way they write about scientific (non-)knowledge – regarding the question what consequences this has what effects their statements could have. Object of research are the statements of actors that are available online – information or programs such as press releases, infosheets, homepages, and blog articles are investigated with regard to linguistic patterns, intertextual networks, as well as indicators of conflicting knowledge and their function within the discourse.

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Nico Blüthgen, Ökologische Netzwerke, FB Biologie, TU Darmstadt

Project staff

Niklas Simon, M.A.

In 2012, a project was initiated at the Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz in cooperation with the Institute for Linguistics and Literature (Prof. Dr. Janich, Prof. Dr. Rapp) – initiated by Damaris Nübling, University of Mainz – aiming to build up a digital surname dictionary. In this project, a substantial part of the range of surnames in Germany (including names of foreign origin) is listed in a lexicographical manner, interpreted in terms of language history, and mapped. The digital dictionary, which is freely accessible to the public, will be constantly updated and enriched with narrative information.

To the webpage

The topic of knowledge transfer for children has been a current issue for many years, which is reflected not only by ever new nonfiction book series for different age groups, children's magazines and TV formats, but also by the veritable boom of children's universities and the increasing interest of science journalists. Surprisingly, however, researchers in the field of linguistics have so far shown little interest in the linguistic strategies of extracurricular knowledge transfer and science education aimed at children. The project is supposed to close this obvious research gap. Thus, children's university lectures, scientific TV-formats, and non-fiction picture books and non-fiction textbooks for children were examined in terms of linguistic, content-related, and multimodal placement strategies, and with regard to the specific content and type of media – distinguishing, for example, between formats that focus on humanistic topics vs. ones that focus the natural sciences.

Project staff

Maike Sänger (born Kern), M.A.

Ewa Kanai, M.A.

Publications

• Janich, Nina/Korbach, Bernadette (angenommen): Das Kindersachbuch zwischen Multi-, Trans- und Intermedialität. In: Lenk, Hartmut et al. (Hrsg.): Medien, Kultur, Multimodalität, Intermedialität. [Tagungsband „Kontrastive Medienlinguistik“, Helsinki 2017]. Bern (Sprache – Kommunikation – Medien).
• Janich, Nina (angenommen): Science revisited. The representation of scientific knowledge and ignorance in the German Kinder-Uni books In: Kramer, Olaf/Gottschling, Markus (eds.): Recontextualization of Knowledge. Boston/Berlin.
• Janich, Nina (2018): Forscher erklären die Rätsel der Welt. Die Darstellung von Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften in den Büchern „Die Kinder-Uni“. In: Luginbühl, Martin/Schröter, Juliane (Hrsg.): Geisteswissenschaften in der Öffentlichkeit. Linguistisch betrachtet. Bern u.a. (Sprache – Kommunikation – Medien 11). 85-105.
• Janich, Nina (2016): Zwischen semiotischer Überforderung und lustvollem Verweilen. Multimodalität im Bildersachbuch für Kinder. In: Jaki, Sylvia/Sabban, Annette (Hrsg.): Wissensformate in den Medien. Analysen aus Medienlinguistik und Medienwissenschaft. Berlin (Kulturen – Kommunikation – Kontakte 25), 51–75.
• Kern, Maike (2016): Kinderwissenssendungen im Fernsehen: Darstellungsformen und Adressierungsstrategien. In: Jaki, Sylvia/Sabban, Annette (Hrsg.): Wissensformate in den Medien. Analysen aus Medienlinguistik und Medienwissenschaft. Berlin (Kulturen – Kommunikation – Kontakte 25), 227–254.
• Sänger, Maike (geb. Kern) (2017): Zur Funktion des Moderators in wissensvermittelnden Magazinsendungen für Kinder. In: Skog-Södersved, Mariann/Breckle, Margit/Enell-Nilsson, Mona (Hrsg.): Wissenstransfer und Popularisierung. Ausgewählte Beiträge der Tagung „Germanistische Forschungen zum Text (GeFoText)“ in Vaasa. Frankfurt a M. (Finnische Beträge zur Germanistik 35), 137–150.

The project aimed to examine, from the viewpoint of linguistics, how the Priority Program evolved as a research initiative focusing on the aspect of responsibility with regard to Climate Engineering (CE) as a research topic. It sees itself as accompanying research to the Priority Program, aimed at examining the concepts of responsibility of the participating scientists, and reflecting the aspect of responsibility in the scope of CE research, especially with regard to uncertainties in climate research. On the part of political science, the analyzes are embedded in the context of the national and international CE discourse.

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Daniel Barben, University of Klagenfurt –

Project staff

Christiane Stumpf, M.A.

Publications

• Janich, Nina/Rhein, Lisa (Hrsg.) (2018): Unsicherheit als Herausforderung für die Wissenschaft. Reflexionen aus Natur-, Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main u.a. (Wissen – Kompetenz – Text 13).
• Janich, Nina/Stumpf, Christiane (2018): Verantwortung unter der Bedingung von Unsicherheit – und was KlimawissenschaftlerInnen darunter verstehen. In: Janich/Rhein (Hrsg.), 179-205.
• Janich, Nina/Stumpf, Christiane (2016): Naturwissenschaftler antworten Journalisten … wie Ungewissheiten und Unsicherheiten in der Klimaforschung kommuniziert werden (sollten) (Leporello) (opens in new tab)
• Janich, Nina/Stumpf, Christiane (2015): Wissenschaft und Verantwortung. Theoretische und empirische Schlaglichter. Erste Projektergebnisse aus der Begleitforschung zum Schwerpunktprogamm 1689 (Leporello) (opens in new tab).

To the research project

The project is based on the hypothesis that urban spaces, along with other factors, are essentially also shaped by linguistic action – culturally, socially, and in terms of urban personal identities – and that this also applies to the sustainability discourse on the urban level, which has so far been largely neglected by linguistic research. This means that should be possible to make out (discursively contested and/or sought-after – and, therefore, relevant with regard to “image”) certain “places” of sustainability in cities that – identified by local actors and others, and in the context of city marketing – are presented as places to identify with. Based on the example of a city comparison between Mainz and Wiesbaden (in the sense of a “most similar cases design”), the project pursues the following research question: Which textual-communicative arrangements and which discursive practices of urban actors in these two cities determine which spaces in the scope of the sustainability discourse; what role do these spaces play in attempts to shape the identity and the image of the respective city; and to what extent can this spatial constitution be seen as in-line with city-specific discourse patterns? One focus of the analyzes was on the respective spatial metaphors.

Project staff

Viona Niemczyk, M.A.

Publications

• Engels, Jens Ivo Engels/Janich, Nina/Monstadt, Jochen/Schott, Dieter (Hrsg.) (2017): Nachhaltige Stadtentwicklung. Infrastrukturen, Akteure, Diskurse. Frankfurt am Main/New York (Interdisziplinäre Stadtforschung 22).
• Niemczyk, Viona (2017): Metaphern – Sprachliche Bauten städtischer Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation? In: Engels et al. (Hrsg.): 223-239.
• Niemczyk, Viona (2017): “Auf dem Weg zur 2000-Watt-Gesellschaft”. Wegmetaphorik und Energiekommunikation in der Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung der Stadt Zürich. In: Rosenberger, Nicole/Kleinberger, Ulla (Hrsg.): Energiediskurs: Perspektiven auf Sprache und Kommunikation im Kontext der Energiewende. Bern (Sprache in Kommunikation und Medien 10), 225-240.
• Niemczyk, Viona (2014): Raumkonstitution und -kognition in und über städtische/r Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation. In: Studentische Projektgruppe Hannover (Hrsg.): Zeit – Raum – Identität. Beiträge der interdisziplinären studentischen Tagung in Hannover vom 25.–27. April 2014. Hannover, 149-176.

The linguistic-communicative treatment of uncertainty in (popular) scientific texts has so far received little attention in the interdisciplinary field of “Ignorance Studies”. Therefore, the research question of the text-linguistic project focuses on non-knowledge in lay-addressed texts of different authors and on different levels of specialization, how it is presented and assessed, from a stylistic-rhetorical point of view – asking how reflecting such strategies of textualization could lead to a more considerate treatment of uncertainty/non-knowledge in science communication. As an example, the project focuses on the conflict discourse regarding a project that addresses the possibility of supplying iron to ocean waters (LOHAFEX 2009).

Project staff

Anne Simmerling, M.A.

Publications

• Simmerling, Anne/Janich, Nina (2015): Rhetorical functions of a ‚language of uncertainty‘ in the mass media. In: Public Understanding of Science (2016) 25.8. Special Issue „Scientific Uncertainty in the Media“, hrsg. von Hans Peter Peters und Sharon Dunwoody. [first published online: Public Understanding of Science 2015, 1-15. DOI: 10.1177/0963662515606681.]
• Janich, Nina/Simmerling, Anne (2015): Linguistics and Ignorance. In: Groß, Matthias/McGoey, Lindsay (Eds.): Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. London/New York, 125-137.
• Janich, Nina/Simmerling, Anne (2013): „Nüchterne Forscher träumen…“ – Nichtwissen im Klimadiskurs unter deskriptiver und kritischer diskursanalytischer Betrachtung. In: Meinhof, Ulrike/Reisigl, Martin/Warnke, Ingo H. (Hrsg.): Diskurslinguistik im Spannungsfeld von Deskription und Kritik. Berlin (Diskursmuster – Discourse Patterns 1), 65-100.

To the webpage

As is known, interdisciplinary projects face special challenges: the disciplines involved are based on distinct modes of thinking, have their own language and different scientific working methods. The diversity helps to shape the identity of the respective discipline, but interdisciplinary communication often turns out to be quite complicated. In a project work with an interdisciplinary orientation, it is therefore necessary to find a way to deal with the resulting communication difficulties, to find a “common language” (at least to a certain extent) and a productive way to access the knowledge resources of the respective partners, despite the different responsibilities of the respective scientific disciplines. The project therefore addressed the question of how interdisciplinarity actually “works” in actual scientific project communication. Leading questions were how the project participants address the aspect of interdisciplinarity as an aspiration, how this is implemented in the context of the project proposal, how this affects the linguistic constitution and negotiation of common knowledge and (possibly) the establishment of a common language, and how it is possible to describe cooperative text production processes in the context of interdisciplinary. The point of reference was an interdisciplinary project, involving physicists and political scientists, on the topic of proliferation resistance of fusion reactors. The investigated material was diverse and consisted, among other material, of various project application versions, mail correspondence, interviews with the project participants, and recordings of project meetings.

Project staff

Ekaterina Zakharova, M.A.

Publications

• Janich, Nina/Zakharova, Ekaterina (2014): Fiktion „gemeinsame Sprache“? Interdisziplinäre Aushandlungsprozesse auf der Inhalts-, der Verfahrens- und der Beziehungsebene. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 61(1): 3–25.
• Janich, Nina (2012a): Fachsprache, Fachidentität und Verständigungskompetenz – zu einem spannungsreichen Verhältnis. In: Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis (BWP) 41/2: „Sprache und Beruf“, 10-13.
• Janich, Nina (2012b): „Ich als Physiker“. Zum Zusammenhang von Fachsprache und Fachidentität. In: Voss, Julia/Stolleis, Michael (Hrsg.): Fachsprachen und Normalsprache. Valerio 12, 93-104.
• Zakharova, Ekaterina (2012): Zwischen Wissensfusion und Interessenspaltung. In: Decker, Michael/Grunwald, Armin/Knapp, Martin (Hrsg.): Der Systemblick auf Innovation. Technikfolgenabschätzung in der Technikgestaltung. Berlin, 459-462.
• Janich, Nina/Zakharova, Ekaterina (2011): Wissensasymmetrien, Interaktionsrollen und die Frage der „gemeinsamen“ Sprache in der interdisziplinären Projektkommunikation. In: Fachsprache. International Journal of Specialized Communication 3-4, 187-204.