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 Bibliography Beier, Rudolf (Hrsg.) (1996): Sprache - System und Funktion: Festschrift für Günter Weise. Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Bern; New York; Paris; Wien: Lang, Bense, Gertrud (Hrsg.) 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