Authentizität – diskursives Wertkonzept und wissenschaftliche Kategorie

Abstract

The authentic as a category of description and value is on the one hand an element of public discourse in order to constitute authenticity and truthfulness in various everyday contexts, on the other hand represents a central object of cultural studies. The functional difference in use resulting from this diversity of the concept is included in the following contribution, which is on the one hand in the context of the research network “Historical Authenticity” of the Leibniz Scientific Association. On the other hand, the considerations are derived from a planned research project on a linguistic social history 1933 to 1945. Newer developments in use and changes in the semantic structure of authentic and the word family are reconstructed in order to answer the question of authenticity as a social construct. On the basis of this finding on the general use of authentic/authenticity, considerations follow, concerning the handling of such language data in the context of language history writing, which are not authentic in the strict sense, i. e. genuine and original. It is about the predicate “authentic” in terms of language data. More precisely, the category “authentic” is placed as a valuation term in the context of language history with the question: What is an authentic language date?