Language as Structure and Language as Process

Wolfgang Kühlwein (Ed.)

Language as Structure and Language as Process. In Honour of Gerhard Nickel on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday

ISBN 978-3-88476-310-0, ISBN 3-88476-310-5, 120 S., kt., € 15,50 (1998)

(FOKUS - Linguistisch-Philologische Studien, Bd. 22)

This volume adopts an integral view of the study of language, and thus lends itself to celebrate August 15th 1998, the 70th birthday of Professor Dr. Gerhard Nickel, M.A., who has always conceived of language as being both ergon and energeia, and of linguistics as having to investigate language both as structure and as process.

This concept is mirrored alike in all contributions to the three fields constituting this book: in applied, in theoretical, and in historical linguistics. All three fields are seen under the auspices of function: functions of language as to language-related problems of contemporary society, as to language-internal mechanisms and processes, and as to strategies of rhetoric within a corresponding socio-cultural historic patterning. As to the mutual relationship of the three fields: it is of a complementary-contrapuntal nature rather than of an alternative-exclusive kind.

Gerhard Nickel's research, his teaching, and in particular his long-term functions as President of the German Association of Applied Linguistics (GAL) and as Secretary General and Vicepresident of the World Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), too contributed significantly towards the evolution of this view of language and its study.