secondAccording to linguist Henning Lobin, language issues have played a bigger role in the early elections of the current Bundestag campaign. The director of the Leibniz German Institute said that compared to four years ago, they appear much more frequently in the election declarations of major political parties. For example, in the CDU, the number of positions on issues such as language integration, hate speech, and language education increased from three to ten.inside AfD The number has doubled, from 8 to 16, and the Green Party has also seen a bonus.
Robin said that since 2017, language-related topics have been booming, including a large-scale refugee movement, which has raised practical questions about the organization of language courses. “However, since then, they have once again been greatly expanded and differentiated.” This shows that all parties are more aware that “language plays a very important role, not only in integration and education, but also in many other aspects.” Only with Social Democratic Party The opposite trend is clear: the number of positions in the election declaration, such as asylum and language skills, promotion of the use of multiple languages or ethnic and regional languages, has been reduced from seven to three.
Gender is all about
According to the researchers, the election plan also reflects “overall, this language is currently being discussed very intensively and controversially among the public.”So position yourself CDU All political parties currently represented in the Bundestag with the FDP are also on gender issues. The left clearly supports non-discriminatory language, while AfD clearly opposes gendering. According to Lobin, CSU expressed “a certain degree of freedom” with this passage: “People who like gender should be gender, but no one should be forced to do so. We represent identity, not ideology.”
According to the Germans, the Green Party, the Left and the Social Democratic Party have consistently used gender asterisks in their plans to indicate personal names such as “citizens”, “voters” and “consumers”, thereby indirectly addressing the issue of gender equality.CDU, CDU and Liberal Democratic Party On the other hand, the German linguistics professor at the University of Mannheim said that double names are used, such as “pension recipients”. In AfD, only universal masculine forms can be found, that is, generalized masculine forms.
The fact that language policies are now appearing more in election plans may be due to the AfD, which has given high priority to these issues in its 2016 basic plan. “AfD may be the first party to recognize that German is a topic with high loyalty potential.”
