Theorie und Methode linguistischer Argumentationsanalyse am Beispiel von Impfdiskursen. Ein Vergleich der parlamentarischen Debatten von 1874 und 2022

Abstract

The pandemic spreading of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which began towards the end of 2019, is one of the most far-reaching events in recent decades, affecting all areas of life. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a debate on mandatory coronavirus vaccination was held in the German Bundestag in 2022. This debate was characterized by different, controversial points of view that clashed in the political context, but also in the societal debate about mandatory vaccination. The fact that the pro and contra arguments put forward are not new ones becomes clear by looking at historical vaccination discourses. In the present study, the parliamentary debate on the Vaccination Act of 1874 and the orientation debate in the Bundestag on mandatory SARS-CoV-2 vaccination form the object of investigation, which covers both discourse-historical aspects and the interest of linguistic research in controversial discourses. The aims of this explorative-qualitative study are (1) to reconstruct the argumentative discursive agonality in both debates by analysing argumentation, argumentation patterns and communicative strategies and (2) to analyse similarities and peculiarities of both discourse sections by comparing the argumentation patterns and as well as the communicative strategies based on a discourse-analytical and politolinguistic approach. The corpus consists of a total of 161 speeches, 48 of which were selected for analysis based on specific criteria. For example, it was found that some aspects of the modern principle of proportionality are recognized by all actors in both debates in the sense of a consensus of values. With respect to concepts of freedom, there are contextual differences insofar as the Bundestag debate is characterized by the agonal basic figures of the primacy of collective freedom on the one hand and the basic figures of the primacy of individual freedom and the paternalistic state on the other, while the Reichstag speakers' concepts of freedom are more strongly motivated by the contemporary Kulturkampf. There are also differences in the use of the persuasion topos, which at the same time illustrate the systemic differences between public political communication in (representative) democracies and in a constitutional monarchy such as the German Empire. It should be noted that it could be the task of further research to further differentiate the informative-persuasive function pattern concerning the degree of freedom and manipulation. Corresponding function patterns could be labeled as follows: the informative-persuasive function, the paternalistic-persuasive function and the indoctrinating-propagandistic function. Regarding the reconstructed communication strategies, it should be emphasized that in both debates, both proponents and opponents focus on the strategies of self-profiling, polarizing opponent devaluation, and devaluation or enhancement of the image of the minority parts of the population who reject the corona or smallpox vaccination. In addition, it is striking that both the Zentrum (Reichstag) and the Union (Bundestag) are pursuing a strategy of calculated uncertainty by questioning the available data in order to delegitimize the respective legislative proposals. A prolongation strategy can only be seen among the supporters of the Vaccination Act of 1874, while all actors in the debate of the Bundestag are trying to distance themselves from the previous pandemic policy measures.