Ajuste en el Polígono Industrial Oeste

Figure 4 presents the most common keywords related to Germany in a semantic map.

The keywords have been encoded as per their relationship to the concepts of nation-state, state and nation. The relationships between the concepts has been marked as either synonymic (e.g Deutschland vs. Bundesrepublik), metonymic (e.g. Berlin vs.

Bundesregierung vs. Deutschland), historical (Deutschland vs. D-Mark or qualitative (Deutschland vs. the adjective deutsch).

The words Deutschland and Bundesrepublik can both be taken to denote the nation-state as a whole. The category state encompasses words related to state organs and politicians (“the elite”), although the country name can also be used to denote the government. The capital name Berlin also bears a metonymic relationship to the government.

The category nation encompasses the nouns Deutsche and words denoting the people or citizens. Although the word Deutsche can be used to refer to the “common people” and citizens distinct from the government, it can also include those in the “elite”: the scope of the referent depends on the given context. The adjective deutsch refers to qualities relating to nation or state.

Figure 5. Semantic map of German keywords

The following tables will give a detailed account of the keywords used, including the three most frequent semantic roles occupied by any given keyword. The categorization of the keywords into these tables follows roughly the categories in figure 4.

Table 6. German nation-state and capital

From Table 6 it can be seen that the term Deutschland is clearly preferred over the rather more formal Bundesrepublik. As can be seen, in the case of Deutschland, the Agent role clearly predominates, followed by the Locative circumstantial element and the Counteragent. The same also applies to the capital name Berlin. From this we can already conclude that these two keywords are in an active position; in other words, their role in a sentence is most often that of a “doer”. This confirms the general observation of previous studies that country names frequently occupy the position of a subject in a sentence and can act as a metonymic index for the government.

One important point about the Agent position is that it does not always mean the action is free, so to speak, as sometimes the action is modified by a modal verb or an adverb, thereby adding an element of volition, possibility, obligation, permissibility or necessity. Take the following sentences for example: “Germany can and must do its part”¹, “Why must Germany assume liability for Greece’s debts?”², “That is why

1 Normales Deutschland. FAZ April 3rd 2010

2 In Haftung. FAZ May 7th 2010

Germany must now pay for Greece”³. In the corpus we find the modality of necessity most often tied to Agent processes involving Germany and making payments.

That the capital is also often in the Agent role confirms another common trend in political and newspaper discourse, which takes the capital name as a metonymic index of a country’s government. The Locative is the second most popular position for both Deutschland and Berlin. Here we find an indication of the double articulation possible for country names: as states, they are both actors as well as bounded territories in which actions and processes take place, although in the case of Berlin, the Locative also holds the sense of being the place where the government is located (“the leaders in Berlin and Paris”⁴). The Experiencer role indicates thinking, feeling and perceiving and is the tertiary role for Belin.

The Counteragent role again signifies being a conscious partner in an interaction, towards which some action is directed. In the international arena, states are seen as participating in mutual interactions as conscious agents, even if, as in the case of the Agent role, this action is often mediated by the state leadership. However, like with the Agent position, a country can be a participant of interaction where the state is only indirectly involved, such as “Germany is criticized for its export surplus”⁵.

3 Griechische Wette. FAZ April 25th 2010

4 Ein Debakel. FAZ June 6th 2010

5 Im Namen Europas. FAZ May 7th 2010

Table 7. German politicians and institutions referred to as schwäbische Hausfrau (Swabian housewife). Schwäbisch is an adjectival rendering of the term Schwabe, which occurs in the corpus 2 times, refers to the

inhabitants of southeastern Germany, known for their thriftiness. Once she is referred to as eiserne Kanzlerin (Iron Chancellor), which is an allusion to the famous German Chancellor in the 19^th century, Otto von Bismarck.

It is also worth taking note of the occurrence of Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder, the former Federal Chancellors of Germany. Kohl appears 10 times and Schröder once. The D-Mark, Germany’s former currency, also appears 10 times. The fact that they are mentioned indicates the presence of a historical perspective in some parts of the corpus.

As for semantic roles, with all the politicians and political organs except the Bundestag (parliament) and the Bundesrat (federal council) we can see a clear preference for the Agent role. With Merkel the Bundesregierung, Bundesverfassungsgericht and the general noun deutsche Politiker the Agent role is predominant. For Merkel, a significant part of her actions are verbal, amounting almost to half of them, as signified by the secondary role Sayer. This is because as a leading politician and Germany’s head of state, her statements are often quoted in the media. Bundesregierung, Bundesverfassungsgericht and deutsche Politiker all have a secondary preference for the Counteragent role. Politicians or state organs are therefore most often depicted as

“doers” and secondly as partners in an interaction.

The Locative role predominating for the parliament and for the Federal Council (which however occurs only once in the whole corpus) can be explained by the fact that these are often conceptualized not only as active organs, but as places where debates, discussions etc. take place.

Table 8. German citizens

Table 8 shows keywords relating to the German people with their various designations as either Deutsche, Bürger, Wähler, Volk or Bevölkerung. Even though the term Schwabe appears in this list, in the corpus it is however not used to refer to Germans in general, but merely to a certain type of attitude towards money.

For these words there is a preference for the position of Experiencer (34 %), followed by those of Counteragent (27 %) and Agent (24 %). For both Deutsche and Bürger, the Experiencer role covers approximately half of all the instances. Deutsche are also fairly often occupying the Agent and Counteragent roles. In their aspect as voters (Wähler) and as a mass noun Bevölkerung the citizens of Germany have a proportional preference for the Agent role. The overall trend for the Experiencer and Counteragent role would indicate that the role of the German citizens and population is articulated more in terms

of thinking, feeling and perceiving and being an interaction, and less as a doer, in contrast to the government. However, since the word Deutsche can in some contexts refer to the whole nation, including the government, it is not a surprise that this word has a secondary preference for the Agent role.