The functional-communicative approach to language: the
genesis and demise of a paradigm
Gerda Haßler (Potsdam)
This paper addresses a language-theoretical paradigm regarding native and foreign-language
teaching and learning, a paradigm which was consciously created in a period historians would
classify as Contemporary History. The work of Wilhelm Schmidt (1914-1982) in the sixties
marks its beginning, and its de facto end coincides with the new orientation of East German
universities after German reunification. Adherence to this paradigm was mandatory for the
linguistics departments of the teachers’ colleges of the GDR; each of the dozens of
dissertations written in this context had to elaborate on a “functional-communicative aspect”
or a “communication process”. This often resulted in constructs that were difficult to relate to
linguistic reality and even less to foreign language instruction. Curious contradictions arose in
the theoretical edifice of the functional-communicative approach to language. The speech act
theory was ostensibly refuted, but on the other hand it was used abundantly and without direct
reference to define own “communication processes”.
However, a rival approach advocated by the linguistics department at the University of Halle,
the communicative-functional approach to language, tended to harmonize well with
communication-based language instruction. Under this paradigm, a number of practical,
useful language instruction books with an international orientation were published. The
dispute between the functional-communicative approach propagated in Potsdam and the
communicative-functional approach expounded in Halle can be seen as an oddity. But the
reason for this contrast does not merely seem to be due to the influence of the Teachers’
College, which tended to be more ideological, and the University, which tended to be more
open to international scholarly discourse. The crucial distinguishing factors appear to be
differences in linguistic theory, which ultimately show up in different ways of treating
empirical data.
1.
The functional-communicative approach to language
developed by Wilhelm Schmidt
Wilhelm Schmidt received his doctorate in Prague in 1937 and passed the secondary school
teacher certification examination qualifying him to teach Czech and Latin. He then began his
teaching career, which he continued even after expulsion from Czechoslovakia and
resettlement in Thuringia, before he took the post of Chair for German Language in 1953 at
the Pedagogical Institute Erfurt. In 1958 he accepted an appointment as professor at the
Teachers’ College Potsdam where he served until his retirement in 1979. Probably the most
important triggers for the ideas Schmidt developed were his orientation toward school and his
awareness that several things needed to be changed in the teaching of German. In particular,
he felt that the communicative capabilities of the school students left much to be desired.
2
Other factors were the institutional conditions which characterized the development of
linguistics in the GDR and which ambitious scholars, in particular, tended to comply with.
There is no doubt that Wilhelm Schmidt set about his work with high ambitions, perhaps even
with a sense of mission. The specific way of introducing ideas and seeking one’s own identity
was characterized by the styles of argumentation used. To justify linguistic investigations,
three groups of argumentation dominated. (Hartung 1997: 31):
1. Orientation toward values of the academic community. This included using scientific
materials, dealing with contradictions and formalization, all of which were considered
to be criteria for the claim to be scientific.
2. Orientation toward “practical needs”, which often first had to be construed or which
the users of linguistic results first had to be made aware of.
3. Orientation toward guiding principles accepted by society and – most important –
propagated by the state. This included, for instance, invoking Marxism or whatever
was held to be Marxism.
The Potsdam school of thought was able to profit from the uniformity of the system of general
education, which enabled it to have considerable influence on textbook production but which,
however, also isolated it from the academic discourse.
The first longer publications by Wilhelm Schmidt were textbooks for the training of German
teachers, which in part are still published today in revised editions (Schmidt 1959, 2007
[11969], compare also later Schmidt 1963b, 1977a, 1977b). The objective of his Habilitation
(qualifying thesis for a tenured university position), which he presented in 1960, was to
increase the significance of meaning. He rejected looking exclusively at form, which he
sweepingly attributed to some new trends of linguistics that he labeled “bourgeois”. (Schmidt
1963a: 5). The functional approach to language, which he had been advocating since the
sixties with an increasingly greater claim, meant a certain increase in the appreciation of
function – which was still hazily defined – as opposed to form. Initially, Schmidt’s objective
was a functional grammar (comp. Schmidt 1965), which aimed in his opinion to “describe the
functionally contingent order in the shape of the system of language” (Schmidt 1965: 5). Later
– and probably not uninfluenced by the choice of the designation functional for different
“western” schools of thought concerning the approach to language – he introduced the term
functional-communicative approach to language (Schmidt 1981). Although this goal
remained constant for over three decades, the determination of what was to be considered
functional remained very unclear to the end. Schmidt himself viewed the concept of function
as having three stages. In the beginning “function … was equated with meaning, but later it
was distinguished from this and defined as intended effect, as intended and usually achieved
communicative effect” (Schmidt 1982: 14). In the meanwhile, however, it was “necessary to
derive the concept of function from the concept of activity and action” (Schmidt 1982: 14).
Georg Michel, Wilhelm Schmidt’s successor in the eighties, also distinguishes three
essentially sequential lines: an action-theoretical line, a field-theoretical line and a texttheoretical line (Michel 1991: 99, Zur Abfolge und Kritik einzelner Etappen [On the sequence
and critique of the individual stages], compare also Starke 1997).
3
In the beginning the desire for autonomy played a role, which demanded demarcation. In the
early sixties the reception of structuralism began, which began to bear initial fruits at the
Academy with the post of Structural Grammar (comp. Bierwisch 1969). Soon, a center for
grammar research developed out of this, which was recognized worldwide. At this time if one
admitted to being an adherent of the functional approach, this signalized primarily the claim
to an alternative path.
The shift to the functional approach was originally strongly influenced by Georg Friedrich
Meier, who in the fifties and early sixties had a substantial part in the organization and
dissemination of the reception of structuralism in the GDR. One of the nine questions which
were posed to the participants in advance of the symposium “Signs and System of Language”,
which took place in Erfurt in 1959 and was mainly organized by Meier, was: “What
relationship exists between form and content in the area of language?” (Meier 1961b: 1). His
publication Das Zéro-Problem in der Linguistik [The Zero Problem in Linguistics], which
was influential at that time, began with the sentence: “The central problem of linguistics is
ultimately always the relationship of linguistic form and communicative function.” (Meier
1961a: 15)
But Meier’s concept of function was clearly defined and had its origins in structural
linguistics. It had little to do with the abstraction and the claim of Schmidt’s concept of
function. Moreover, Meier was interested in the relationship of form and content on a
linguistic level. By contrast, Schmidt first interpreted it philosophically, thereafter relating it
to language. The discussion which had already begun in Erfurt about whether the transference
of the philosophical relationship of content and form to linguistics could lead to meaningful
results apparently did not affect him.
Obviously, the Potsdam adherents of functional grammar were not interested in propagating
an independent theory from the very beginning. In the place of an “anatomy of language“, as
the structuralists were propagating, Schmidt wanted a “physiology” which investigated the
functioning of language in the communication process. A theory of functional grammar was
not published until the end of the sixties (1969). With the justification of functionalcommunicative language description at the beginning of the seventies, the boundaries of
grammar were ultimately crossed.
In 1972, upon the initiative of Schmidt, the Institute for Marxist-Leninist Language Theory in
Teacher Training was founded. It is doubtful whether the name encouraged the ideologization
of the discourse. At least, however, one of the above mentioned conditions of linguistictheoretical discourse was taken into account. Dogmatization took place more in a linguistictheoretical area through the exclusion of many essential aspects of language and the fixation
on the investigation of communication plans and the functional means of their realization
derived from it.
To be sure, the pragmatic shift was a general phenomenon in the linguistics of the seventies,
and a communicative approach to language took place in the most diverse variants. In the
normal case, a paradigm must assert itself in the academic community: If it does not
accomplish this, it remains just one approach among many. Nonetheless, it may pursue goals
that should be taken seriously and possibly even use adequate methods. In this respect, one-
4
sided approaches cannot do any harm since they are complemented by competing approaches.
But as soon as an approach is declared to be the only valid one, as in the case of the
functional-communicative approach to language, and at least in the area of teacher training is
propagated exclusively, correction through competing approaches ceases to exist.
2. Tenets of the functional-communicative approach to language
What comprised the core of the functional-communicative approach to language?
Instead of isolated grammatical forms or paradigms, forms and models were studied that
fulfill the same or a similar function in linguistic communication. Since according to this view
grammatical and lexical means interact in linguistic communication, they were represented
integratively and thus in this interaction as field-like. The mention was of “functionalcommunicative fields”, as they were described as field of linguistic means of stimulating or
demanding.
Many traditional topics of grammar instruction were passed over in favor of assigning
grammatical or lexical units or forms to communication processes or to certain kinds of texts,
the study of systematic relationships of language was put on the back burner.
Linguistic communication activity was primarily viewed under the characteristic of its
consciousness: “It takes place according to an action plan, which we call communication plan.
All kinds of action plans are the expression of the specific human ability to adumbrate an
activity intellectually and to consciously plan actions to achieve a goal.” (Schmidt 1981: 21)
Here Schmidt invokes the Soviet psychologist Rubinstein and, for psycholinguistic and
linguistic-didactic issues in the narrower sense, also Aleksej Leont’ev (Leont’ev 1974,
Leont’ev 1975, compare also Viehweger 1984). On the other hand, the designation “speech
act theory” in Schmidt’s writings is always accompanied by the attribute “bourgeois”. He
criticizes adherents of this theory for not being interested in the intellectual-linguistic
operations which Schmidt calls communication processes: “Also intellectual-linguistic
operations, which are not taken into account in the bourgeois speech act theory, function in
the characteristic sense as process units.” (Schmidt 1981: 33). Another reason he did not want
to acknowledge the speech act theory was because Soviet linguists had already prior to that
come to the conclusion that one must distinguish between syntactic construction and
communicative function. Already in 1955 Žinkin showed that a structural form like the
interrogative sentence usually exercises different functions. For instance, the rhetorical
question also has the function of confirmation. On the other hand, a function can be realized
through different sentence types (Schmidt 1981: 46). Schmidt’s criticism of the speech act
theory is “that speech acts are understood as behavior patterns which occur due to the effect
of rules on the generation of utterances. These rules are abstract and do not take social
conditions into account” (Schmidt 1981: 62). A linguistic-didactic model of communicative
competence cannot be meaningfully and successfully implemented on the basis of a
communication-theoretical speech-act concept that generally implies the ideal speaker and
listener whose communicative activity is not perceived as part of a social activity, in which
his conflict with objective reality under quite specific social conditions takes place, but as
5
rule-driven behavior, which is isolated from social circumstances and steered mechanically on
the basis of internalized rules” (Schmidt 1981: 62-63).
With the simultaneous rejection of the speech act theory and of generative grammar, Schmidt
conjured up a “bad-guy” image which he then polemically contrasted to the theory of
linguistic action, which for him was the “good” theory. It could be asked with a certain
justification whether Schmidt’s propagation of communication processes really took concrete
social conditions into account. Besides, the construction of this bad-guy image led to an
unacceptable mishmash of concepts.
In the functional-communicative approach to language, reflections on linguistic theory had
basically only taken place in the debate with the so-called bourgeois linguists. These included,
besides the speech act theory he repeatedly criticized, both American descriptive linguistics
and Chomsky, as well as the content-oriented language approach of Weisgerber, which was
characterized as “philosophical-idealistic” and “irrational”. In the reality of research one had
been searching since the seventies for a regular relationship between linguisticcommunicative actions and lexical-grammatical means. These means complexes were
described as functional-communicative fields and were supposed to be made useful for
language instruction. If such fields were utilized in teaching, they would give an indication
that e.g. with the communication process “describing”, the field of the adjectives, such as
color, material, situation, form and value adjectives, is meaningful. In this way, a selection of
grammatical materials is made available to the acquisition of communication processes.
The list of dissertations and other monographs written about communication processes is
quite revealing:
1976:
1976:
1978:
1978:
1979:
1979:
1979:
1979:
1979:
1979:
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Beweisen im Kommunikationsplan Überzeugen (Dissertation PH
Potsdam, Marga Drebenstedt)
Untersuchungen zur Theorie der sozialistischen Argumentation als Grundlegung für das
Kommunikationsverfahren Argumentieren (Dissertation PH Dresden, Herbert Kärgel)
Zur Funktion von Stilfiguren in der sprachlichen Gestaltung: eine Untersuchung an politischagitatorischen und politisch-propagandistischen Texten, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des
Zusammenhanges von Stilfiguren und Kommunikationsverfahren (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Peter
Klemp)
Zur Spezifik und Modifikation mobilisierender Kommunikationsverfahren im Unterrichtsprozeß
(Dissertation PH Potsdam, Helga Kohn)
Kommunikationsverfahren, Beschreibung und Gruppierung (Habilschrift PH Potsdam, Hanna Harnisch)
Kommunikationsverfahren und ihre sprachliche Realisierung : Zur linguistischen Fundierung der Ausund Weiterbildung auf dem Gebiet Deutsch als Fremdsprache. (Habilschrift PH Potsdam, Siegfried
Weber)
Untersuchungen zum Ausdruck temporaler Beziehungen bei der Realisierung der
Kommunikationsverfahren Berichten und Beschreiben (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Karola Kunz; Peter
Kunz)
Untersuchungen zu den Kommunikationsverfahren Berichten und Beschreiben, ihren relevanten
funktional-kommunikativen Merkmalen und deren sprachlicher Objektivierung (Dissertation PH
Potsdam, Monika Brockmann)
Psycholinguistische und linguistische Untersuchungen spezifischer Kommunikationsverfahren bei der
Textsorte "Bildbetrachtung" (Dissertation PH Dresden Heinz-Uwe Schöffel)
Zu den Kommunikationsverfahren Beurteilen und Kommentieren : Wesen, Struktur u. funktionalkommunikative Merkmale sowie Möglichkeiten ihrer sprachl. Realisierung (Dissertation PH Erfurt,
Petra Liebert)
6
1979
1979:
1980:
1980:
1980:
1980
1981:
1981
1981
1982:
1982:
1982
1982
1982
1983:
1983
1983
1983
1983
1984:
1984:
1984
Das Kausalfeld der deutschen Sprache der Gegenwart in seinem Verhältnis zu den
Kommunikationsverfahren Begründen, Schlussfolgern und Verallgemeinern (Dissertation PH Zwickau
Barbara Ebersbach)
Linguistische und fremdsprachenmethodische Untersuchungen zum Kommunikationsverfahren Fragen
im Deutschunterricht für ausländische Germanistikstudenten (Dissertation Humboldt Universität Berlin,
Doris Böhlke)
Untersuchungen zu sprachpädagogisch relevanten Kommunikationsverfahren in der sprachpraktischen
und sprachwissenschaftlichen Ausbildung von Russischlehrerstudenten (Auffordern, Fragen, Anregen,
Appellieren) (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Angelika Bonczyk)
Wesen und Realisierung der Kommunikationsverfahren "Erzählen" und "Schildern". (Dissertation PH
Potsdam, Kirsten Neubauer)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Vergleichen, dargestellt am Beispiel der Fächer Deutsch und
Heimatkunde in den Klassen 1 bis 4 (Dissertation PH Zwickau, Margret Neumann)
Zum Kommunikationsverfahren Entlarven : verallgemeinerte inhaltl. Leistung, Struktur u. funktionalkommunikative Merkmale sowie Möglichkeiten u. Mittel ihrer sprachl. Realisierung (Dissertation PH
Erfurt, Wilhelm Schellenberg)
Untersuchungen zum Kommunikationsverfahren Widerlegen und zu seiner sprachlichen Realisierung
(Dissertation PH Potsdam, Jost Ellendt)
Die Rolle lexikalischer und grammatischer Mittel in den Kommunikationsverfahren (KV) Vergleichen
und Verallgemeinern in den Fächern Geschichte und Deutsch der Klassen 9 und 10 (Dissertation PH
Zwickau, Hans-Joachim Schwochow)
Grundlagen für die Einbeziehung des Konzepts der Kommunikationsverfahren in die fremdsprachige
Weiterbildung ausländischer Deutschlehrer (Habilschrift PH Dresden, Dagmar Blei)
Zum Kommunikationsverfahren Erzählen und seiner sprachlichen Objektivation in künstlerischen und
nichtkünstlerischen Texten der russischen Sprache der Gegenwart (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Veronika
Leffler)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Anregen, untersucht an Texten kultureller Angebote (Dissertation,
Wilfried Pröger)
Zur Rolle semantischer Satzklassen in ausgewählten Kommunikationsverfahren (Dissertation PH
Potsdam Magdeburg, Martina Otto)
Die Bedeutung der Kommunikationsverfahren und ihrer funktional-kommunikativen Merkmale für den
Aufbau von erörternden Nachworten zu belletristischen Texten (Dissertation PH Dresden, Cornelia
Walther)
Untersuchungen zur Realisierung von Kommunikationsverfahren in den Lehrmaterialien für den
Russischunterricht der Polytechnischen Oberschule : (e. Beitr. zur Selektion e. sprachl. Minimums).
(Dissertation Humboldt Universität Berlin, Doris von Hoyningen-Huene)
Distinktive sprachliche Merkmale bei der Realisierung der Kommunikationsverfahren Berichten und
Beschreiben in Pressetexten (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Gertruda Paciorek)
Die Rolle lexischer und grammatischer Mittel im Kommunikationsverfahren (KV) Vergleichen im
Deutschunterricht der Klassen 5 und 6 (Dissertation PH Zwickau, Helgard Schiebert)
Untersuchungen zur Komposition beim Kommunikationsverfahren Erzählen (Dissertation PH
Magdeburg, Kornelia Pape)
Das funktional-kommunikative Merkmal "komprimiert" und seine Objektivierung in den
Kommunikationsverfahren Definieren und Zusammenfassen (Dissertation PH Magdeburg, Beate
Zacharias)
Die Modalverben "mögen" und "dürfen" in Konfrontation mit dem Russischen unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung ihrer Relevanz für die Konstituierung bestimmter Kommunikationsverfahren
(Dissertation PH Leipzig, Bärbel Steinmüller)
Untersuchungen zum Kommunikationsverfahren Auffordern in Aufgabenstellungen für das
Selbststudium von Lehrern und Erziehern (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Margit Radke)
Wesen und Realisierung des FKM "konkret" in ausgewählten Kommunikationsverfahren (Dissertation,
PH Magdeburg, Ursula Giers)
Zum Kommunikationsverfahren Beurteilen und zu seiner sprachlichen Realisierung in politischen
Texten der russischen Sprache der Gegenwart. (Dissertation PH Güstrow, Volker Brasch)
7
1985:
1985:
1985:
1985:
1985
1985:
1985
1985
1986:
1986
1986
1986
1987:
1987:
1987:
1988:
1988:
1988:
1989:
1989:
1990:
Kommunikationsverfahren in Wissenschaft und Technik : zur fachsprachlichen Aus- und Weiterbildung
von Ausländern. Leipzig : Verl. Enzyklopädie (Reihe Zur Theorie und Praxis des Deutschunterrichts für
Ausländer, Siegfried Weber )
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Fragen: Wesen, Umfeld und sprachliche Realisierung (Reihe Zur
Theorie und Praxis des Deutschunterrichts für Ausländer, Hanna Harnisch)
Untersuchungen zu den Kommunikationsverfahren Berichten und Beschreiben, ihren
funktionalkommunikativen Merkmalen und ihrer sprachlichen Objektivation im russischen Text
(Dissertation PH Potsdam, Apollonia Müller)
Realisierung inventiver Kommunikationsverfahren: Begründen, Beweisen, Widerlegen in
russischsprachigen Originaltexten außenpolitischen Inhalts (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Gabriele Brill)
Theoretische und methodologische Probleme einer funktional-kommunikativen Beschreibung von
Kommunikationsverfahren
unter
besonderer
Berücksichtigung
der
inventiven
Kommunikationsverfahren (Dissertation PH Erfurt, Inge Pohl)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Referieren in der mündlichen sprachlichen Kommunikation.
(Dissertation PH Leipzig, Karin Hämmer)
Kommunikationsgegenstand, kommunikative Einstellung, Thema und Kommunikationsverfahren :
Unters. zu Wesen u. Beziehungen d. Kategorien als Beitr. zur theoret. Fundierung einer funktionalkommunikativen Sprachbeschreibung (Dissertation PH Dresden, Christine Bock)
Zur Spezifik der Rezeption mündlicher Texte, untersucht am Einfluss von Kommunikationsverfahren
auf die Rezeptionsleistung (Dissertation PH Leipzig, Margarethe Schmidt)
Zum Wesen der Kommunikationsverfahren Mitteilen, Feststellen, Behaupten, ihren sprachlichen
Indikatoren sowie Möglichkeiten der Gliederung des ermittelten Sprachmaterials - untersucht an Texten
der Tagespresse (Dissertation PH Potsdam, Anita Donew)
Zur Verwendung der Sprachmittel des Modalfeldes der Notwendigkeit in der russischen Sprache der
Gegenwart bei der sprachlichen Gestaltung bestimmter Kommunikationsverfahren (konfrontative
Untersuchungen) (Dissertation PH Leipzig, Petra Bielagk)
Zum Verhältnis zwischen semantischen Merkmalen der Modalität und funktional-kommunikativen
Merkmalen der Kommunikationsverfahren: e. Beisp. d. Beziehungen zwischen funktional-semant.
Feldern u. funktional-kommunikativen Feldern/Kommunikationsverfahren (Dissertation PH Leipzig,
Bernd Werner)
Zur Bedeutungsanalyse von Bezeichnungen für Kommunikationsverfahren bei der Ermittlung von
Verfahrensmerkmalen. (Dissertation PH Erfurt, Horst Ehrhardt)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Beurteilen in der Textsorte "Personenbeurteilung"· - Ermittlung von
verfahrens- und textsortenspezifischen Strukturen anhand russischsprachiger Texte (Dissertation PH
Potsdam, Jürgen Weiß)
Die Nutzung von Kommunikationsverfahren zur Präzisierung des Zielbildes und zur Effektivierung der
Arbeit am Sprechen im Englischunterricht der POS (Dissertation Universität Rostock, Hannelore
Richter)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Fragen im Kommunikationsereignis Unterrichtsstunde - zur sprachlichkommunikativen Führungstätigkeit des Lehrers (Dissertation PH Erfurt, Petra Trotte)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Beschreiben : Wesen und aufgabenabhängige Realisierung (Reihe Zur
Theorie und Praxis des Deutschunterrichts für Ausländer, Hanna Harnisch)
Die Variabilität der sprachlichen Gestaltung - nachgewiesen am Kommunikationsverfahren Kritisieren
(Dissertation PH Erfurt, Elke Galgon)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren definieren und seine Realisierung in ausgewählten Textsorten der
russischen Sprache der Gegenwart (Dissertation PH Erfurt, Karin Gusjew)
Das Kommunikationsverfahren Berichten : Wesen und Realisierung in unterschiedlichen
Kommunikationsbereichen und Textsorten (Lehrmaterialien für die sprachliche Weiterbildung
ausländischer Deutschlehrer, Dagmar Blei)
Die Kommunikationsverfahren Beurteilen, Charakterisieren und Beschreiben in der Rezension
wissenschaftlicher Werke (Dissertation PH Güstrow, Annette Sakautzky)
Die Entwicklung des monologischen Sprechens in den fachbezogenen Etappen der
Sprachkundigenausbildung, dargestellt am Kommunikationsverfahren (KV) Beschreiben in englischen
Fachtexten (Dissertation Halle, Reinhold Thienelt)
8
But communication plans and communication processes only represent one avenue to the
factors governing word choice in linguistic action. When investigating which factors
determine the decision in favor of certain lexical means in linguistic action, the assumption of
such functional-communicative fields does not lead any further. On the contrary, it even
decontextualizes the lexemes from the actions.
The basic assumption that communication intentions and communicative tasks determine the
communication plan and thus the communication processes, and these, in turn, via functionalcommunicative characteristics determine the “selection of linguistic means” was criticized
from many sides, not last by the project participants themselves (comp. Schippan 1997: 67).
The following points were met with increasing criticism from peers and colleagues:
1. Not all topics can be viewed functionally and assigned as specific linguistic means to
functional-communicative fields. In this sense the neglect of morphology, word
formation and lexicology was lamented.
2. The systemic relationships of language were underestimated. When everything was
excluded from consideration which could not be seen as specific for one of the
communication processes, such basic units of language were also affected by that
which generally serve to organize speech, such as morphological categories,
functional words or even the largest part at all of the main parts of speech.
3. The representation of language disengaged itself in a “description of means” in
serving the investigation of communication methods and kinds of texts. The point of
departure and goal were no longer language, but the method-contingent assignment of
selected linguistic means.
4.
The communicative-functional approach to language in Halle
To a large extent, the teachers’ colleges accepted the Potsdam descriptive model
unconditionally, and own research interests were more or less adroitly assigned to it. Criticism
was repeatedly expressed by the universities and the Academy on fundamental issues. It
concerned the plausibility of the fundamental approach per se, the superficial reference to
practical necessities, the relationship of the activity and system aspect or complying with
academic norms (Helbig 1973, 1986, Motsch 1986, Hartung 1989).
When in the seventies a research group headed by Wolfgang Boeck and Günter Weise began
to apply Schmidt’s model of communication processes to the description of foreign languages
and the fundamentals of foreign language instruction, they could not bypass this criticism.
In fact, Schmidt had developed his model primarily for teaching the mother tongue, and
therefore his proposed tenets could only function rudimentarily because the students were
proficient in the grammar of their own language. Only in a few cases were papers published in
Potsdam regarding research on English and Russian, the only languages for which the
teachers’ college offered teacher training.1 The task of seeking solutions for foreign language
1
Even the articles published by Hanna Harnisch on German as a foreign language tended to view the functioning
of foreign languages in communication and left the confrontational view of languages to foreign authors (comp.
Harnisch 1985)
9
instruction on a communicative basis was accepted in Halle with hesitation, but nevertheless
with the hope of creating something original.
The first, perhaps odd appearing innovation was a reversal of the order of attributes in the
title. Linguists in Halle were engaged in a communicative-functional approach to language.
This change remained unexplained in the publications of the Halle research group, but it came
about due to reservations regarding Schmidt’s concept of function.
In a long discussion process which at times involved fifteen people, the theses on the
communicative-functional approach to language as theoretical basis of foreign language
instruction were developed (Boeck 1981: 7-33). In its striving for inner consensus in the
discussion, the group was inclined to make statements that were sometimes very general and
banal. Lines of argumentation or the processing of reference material were not made
transparent, so that the theses in their form seemed to have a very rigorous and dogmatic
effect. As far as content was concerned, however, in a few points the theses went beyond what
was propagated in Potsdam.
What was new was the possibility to also classify and describe linguistic means that had a
constructive function and included elements that not only served the realization of
communication processes but had certain linguistic functional characteristics that served the
realization of several different processes. The linguistically relevant concept of the functionalsemantic category can be seen as theoretical background, for which Michail Bondarko was
primarily invoked (comp. Bondarko 1995). Aspectuality could be represented on this basis as
a linguistic means complex for several languages, even if a grammatical core cannot be
assigned to it like in the Slavic languages. Thus the possibility was created to do research on
different structural aspects of language and to declare them as communicative-functional.
Beyond studying the processes of communication, which in the opinion of most of the Halle
communicative functionalists led to a classification that was too crude, research papers were
written on ‘functional linguistic means complexes’ that were defined less communicatively
than cognitively. As point of departure for such ‘functional linguistic means complexes’ the
communication processes appeared to be only one among many:
“The respective functional linguistic means complexes are heterogeneous and of varying
extent of abstraction. They can be derived from different points of departure (morphologic,
syntactic-semantic, pragmatic) and conceived in the shape of ‘functional-semantic
categories/fields’, ‘concept-’ or ‘meaning categories’, ‘grammatical-lexical fields’, ‘semanticsyntactic relation types’ and ‘communication procedures.” (Boeck 1981: 13)
Immediately following this, mention was made of which phenomena are actually at issue.
With the language comparison, a further aspect of investigation is named that is quite far from
that of the Potsdam group:
“The means of these functional complexes (modality, temporality, causality, imperativity,
interrogativity, among others) decisively contribute to enabling the expression of their
function to be shaped correspondingly. The functional linguistic means complexes offer a
very favorable point of departure for contrasting investigations of Russian, English, French
and German.” (Boeck 1981: 13)
10
But also Schmidt’s vehement criticism of the so-called “bourgeois” linguistics could hardly
be taken seriously. In the Halle group the research papers of the speech act theoreticians were
discussed, and different variants were reviewed and adopted, which is expressed in the
conception of the communication process and its different determinants.
Besides its orientation on foreign language instruction in schools (comp. Boeck 1991), the
research group in Halle was also distinguished by its marked use of linguistic terminology
(comp. Boeck 1987, Boeck/Sternin 1991, Weise 1983, Weise 1984, Weise 1996, Ernst Moritz
Arndt University Greifswald 1990)
The relationship of both groups was rather tense, although criticism rarely appeared in
publications. Thus, the result of a long debate about the concept of function and the demand
for a more differentiated view of the functions in the Theses is merely formulated in the
following way: “The concept of “function” includes the concepts of “communication
intention” and “communicative effect”. One can get by with the superordinate concept
‘function’ as long as the communication intention and communicative effect are in
agreement” (Boeck 1981: 11). This summarized in a nutshell a long and in part vehement
discussion about the concept of function, which was criticized as assuming that linguistic
utterances were absolutely intended and would lead away from the linguistic reality.
Conversely, in Potsdam the considerations of the linguistics department in Halle were viewed
as ideas put forward by foreign language teachers lacking theoretical profundity. In the
eighties intensive and fruitless discussions erupted concerning the introduction of new
communication methods, which the majority of linguists were hardly aware of any longer.
5.
Conclusions
One of the first to apply the concept of school to the approach pioneered by Wilhelm Schmidt
was Manfred Bierwisch (1969: 255), who scathingly criticized this approach in 1990.
Certainly nothing else was to be expected in light of the thirty-year history of functional
communicative linguistics. After the death of Wilhelm Schmidt, stilistic- and linguisticdidactical research moved to the forefront in Potsdam (Harnisch 1985, Michel 1985, 1988).
This continued in individual cases even after 1990, but then without institutional anchorage.
Communicative-functional linguistics in Halle, which was based on language instruction, also
continued (Michel 2001).
The many textbooks with exercises based on the communication method could not be the
subject of this study. Estimating their effectiveness in language instruction is impossible,
since both linguistic research groups, in Potsdam as well as in Halle, had no real relationship
to school despite the fact that they constantly stressed the practical orientation of their tenets.
However, the result that could be expected actually occurred: when teaching recurring units of
the language system takes a back seat in favor of communicatively assignable types of
expression, the expressions are learned in their entirety and can thus no longer be used
creatively in different situations.
In a number of characteristics the functional-communicative approach to language is
consistent with international trends. The reason why the shift away from it was embraced so
readily can be that the paradigm was felt to be forced.
11
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