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In:Discourses of War and Peace: 21st century perspectives
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 355] 2026
► pp. 217–249

Debating the Ukraine war in the German public

Three open letters, an op-ed, and their uptake in the German quality press

 | Vienna University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
In this article, an elite-discourse fragment from the beginning of the war in Ukraine is analyzed. It comprises four reference texts (an op-ed by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and three open letters) dealing with the controversial issue of German heavy arms supply for Ukraine, as well as the uptake of these texts in opinion articles of the German quality press. The analysis focuses on recontextualizations of actors and previous texts, argumentative structures, their pragmatic purposes, and the legitimation of standpoints that had been put forward. Results show that only the first two reference texts (opposing German heavy arms supply) were widely discussed in the quality press. In the uptaking opinion articles, mainly the protagonists of the reference texts, their standpoints and arguments were evaluated and criticized, but almost no counter-argumentations were presented. It is concluded that in this historical situation, the German quality press staged a public conflict but did not discuss any alternative solutions besides the two standpoints it construed as contradicting each other.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Recontextualization
    • 2.2Argumentation schemes
    • 2.3Legitimation strategies
    • 2.4Research questions
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.The reference texts
    • 4.1Implicit recontextualization — actor representations
    • 4.2Argumentation
  • 5.The uptaking opinion texts
    • 5.1Implicit recontextualization — actor representations
    • 5.2Argumentation and explicit recontextualization
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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