Wie die Norm zur Normalität wird: Die diskursive Etablierung von Normen in Lehrbüchern zur Unternehmenskommunikation

When examining language norms in professional contexts, linguists often focus on the description of norms and, in some cases, on the question who sets the norms in question. From a discourse analytical perspective, however, it is more interesting to ask how norms are set, independently from their content. This study describes the linguistic means by which norms concerning economical thinking and entrepreneurial action are established in business management and communication manuals. The analysis shows that those manuals are explicitly normative, as appears at the text surface both in the recurrent use of the modal verbs müssen ('must') and sollen ('should') and in frequent definitions. Moreover, the manuals are implicitly normative. Many linguistic means tacitly presuppose far-reaching beliefs and attitudes, e.g. the assumption that interactions function according to the simple principle of cause and effect. The function of these means is to discursively remove a priori controversial propositions from the domain of controversy and to establish the worldview promoted/presupposed by these manuals in the minds of future managers as the only conceivable model. The discourse analytical deconstruction of the way economical norms are constructed in discourse aims at opening up ideologically closed spaces of thinking.