The tiger salient : a study of Heimito von Doderer's language terminology

The Austrian novelist Heimito von Doderer (1896-1966) gained his reputation after World War II with the novels Die Strudlhofstiege (1951) and Die Dämonen (1956). His interest in language, its functions and its innermost essence appears from his novels, his diaries and his essays. In order to express his energetic conception of language he used an individual and partly newly-created terminology.This dissertation deals in the main with an analysis of approximately 25 central sentences {Fundamentalsätze), containing more than 100 terms, according to the criteria of content and formal aspects. Chapter 5 focuses on Doderer's view of life (Lebensphilosophie), a combination of philosophy, psychology and religion. The role of memory, the exploration of thinking and the depiction of creativity constitute combined endeavours in his work, in which he was influenced by Weininger's and Swoboda's terms and theses. Chapter 6 treats linguistic terminology proper. Two different examples may demonstrate Doderer's remarkable intuition for linguistic essentials. Beginning with the indirect essence of language he supposes that there is no fundamental difference between the birth of language and the creation of metaphors. Secondly he conceives of a sentence as being formed as a structural unit, based on a formula (Strukturformel). Similar opinions are represented in modern linguistics.The formal aspects of his terminology are dealt with in Chapter 7, including the different types of terms and the possibilities of word-formation, to express definitions and thematic connections. In the novel Die Merowinger (1962) Doderer constructs a burlesque travesty of erudite professional language.digitalisering@um