Parteipolitische Konflikte

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This book inquires into what party politicians do to be successful in competing with their rivals. First, they must command a specific kind of commmunicative knowledge and specific conflict strategies. Politicians lock horns under different conditions from their voters: they engage with each other as representatives of their parties, in front of an audience, and above all in a bid for political power. Thus party political conflicts are highly complex action/language games planned and enacted in accordance with special strategies. Of interest is the question where these strategies come from and what effects they have on the way present-day politicians use language. A historical comparison of political language games in the GDR, the 'old' Federal Republic, and its modern-day counterpart reveals that long-established and long-rehearsed conflict strategies are astonishingly tenacious although there are viable alternatives. These alternatives are discussed in detail and presented in the form of communicative 'modules'. This instrument is then used to examine and evaluate the strategic consistency of party communication in the German general elections of 1994.