Sprache und Emotionen in Abbas Khiders Roman Palast der Miserablen: Eine linguistische Analyse der emotionalen Schreibstrategien

Abstract

This article undertakes a linguistic analysis of the novel Palast der Miserablen (2020), written by the German-Iraqi author Abbas Khider (1973). The study focuses on the verbalization of the emotion of fear, which, although it is not the main theme of the novel, pervades the entire narrative, and affects its expressivity. The analysis is based on the assumption that the impact potential of a literary text depends to a considerable extent on its emotion power. Linguistic analysis can identify structures at various levels of a text, through which these emotions are encoded and expressed. Following the thoughts of Schwarz-Friesel in Sprache und Emotion (2013), those elements are identified on the lexical level of the novel, and they contribute to the verbalisation of the emotion of fear. The analysis is centred on three sets of questions: 1. the influence of emotions on language processing, 2. the conceptualisation of emotions in linguistic expressions, and 3. the reciprocal relationship between certain emotions and their linguistic designations in
individual text types or texts.