Linguistic Structure of Memory Images in Polish and German Language Obituaries for Marcel Reich-Ranicki , as a Media Tool for the Profiling of Collective Memory

Abstract

The media contribute to the process of strengthening and consolidating the collective memory of specific communities by taking, emphasising, and disseminating particular topics and contents. In this context, the so-called mediatised memory (see Assmann, 2007, Zielińska, 2018) occurs more and more often, as well as the media mechanisms and strategies for forming or deforming reality that influence or even model our memory of well-known figures, events or processes. It is both mediated and caused by the language which 'on the one hand appears as a substance and a 'bearer' of collective memory, and on the other, as a medium that shapes the contents of collective memory' . The aim of the following paper is to investigate the selected corpus (obituaries) and determine to what extent the analysis of specific approaches in the field of linguistics and discourse can lead to the conclusion regarding mediatised and collective memory (see Czachur, 2016;. Additionally, it attempts to show whether and to what extent the media model the collective memory, as well as create and disseminate the linguistic profile of well-known personalities. In order to shed some light on the mediatized memory and to explain it from a linguistic perspective, obituaries for Marcel Reich-Ranicki are subjected to a contrastive German-Polish analysis. The analysis draws on selected methods of linguistic discourse analysis, which serve the linguistic profiling of actors, namely nominations and predicates as well as role assignments referring to the mentioned personality with the aim to investigate the shaping of the collective memory by the media. A detailed contrastive corpus-based analysis of the above-mentioned text type provides an insight into the role of linguistic strategies of remembering in the construction of the collective memory.