Weizen hin, Pils her – Korpuslinguistische Untersuchung einer Phrasem-Konstruktion im Gebrauch

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the German phraseme construction [X hin, X/Y her ] on the basis of an exploratory corpus-linguistic analysis of 596 instances from different communicative domains. The study focuses on the ways in which the construction is used for rhetorical relevance management in contemporary German. Combining semantic, formal, and pragmatic perspectives, the analysis shows that the construction functions as a device for complexity reduction: specific concepts, including normative values, technical terms, emotional stances, and argumentative positions, are rhetorically suspended in order to strengthen the pragmatic force of subsequent speech acts or to shield them from potential objections. Particular attention is paid to the distribution of the variants [X hin, X her ] and [X hin, Y her ], the semantic-pragmatic relations between the slot fillers, and the construction’s embedding in different discourse contexts. The results show notable productivity in newspaper discourse and Wikipedia discussions. The variant [X hin, Y her ] is especially relevant for creating scalar exhaustion across semantic continua and for marking ad-hoc relations in argumentative and even polemical contexts.