Rudolf Muhr

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Rudolf Muhr, 2014

Rudolf Muhr (* 1950 in southern Burgenland ) is an Austrian Germanist , assistant professor i. R. at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz and one of the most prominent representatives of an independent Austrian standard German . The Austrian word and bad word of the year , which has been elected annually since 1999, goes back to his initiative .

Live and act

Rudolf Muhr studied in Graz German and English studies (teacher) and graduated in 1979 with the graduation ceremony for master's from. He then did his doctorate in German Philology and Applied Linguistics and has been a researcher and lecturer at the Karl-Franzens University since then . In 1980 he initiated university summer language courses for non-German-speaking students (German in Graz) and founded the course in German as a foreign language (DaF) in 1981 , which he headed until 1992. In 1983 he initiated a scholarship program to enable third world students to take summer language courses.

He developed new teaching materials for GFL lessons and was repeatedly confronted with the question of which form of German is the right one and which form should be taught for non-native speakers. Especially with GFL lessons in Austria, the question arose whether one should teach the German pronunciation and Duden vocabulary, as suggested by the existing teaching materials, or the Austrian German, with which the foreign students are really confronted in everyday life in Austria .

As a result, his research focus shifted more and more towards linguistics and variety research and in 1996 he founded the “Research Center Austrian German” at the Karl-Franzens University , which was the first academic institution to research Austrian standard German (not the dialect).

The choice of the Austrian word and unword of the year , which has taken place annually since 1999, goes back to his initiative . Before that, Austrian media had mostly adopted the word of the year from Germany. In 1998, however, the word “red-green” was chosen as word of the year due to its frequent use in the German media, which, however, did not correspond to Austrian reality at all, and so Muhr decided to make his own choice the following year to organize for Austria. In 2002 this idea was adopted by Liechtenstein and in 2003 by German-speaking Switzerland.

Rudolf Muhr is the author of a pronunciation dictionary for Austrian German, and under his patronage the much-cited study by Jutta Ransmayr on the prestige of Austrian German abroad was carried out. In addition, he deals with language contact with the neighboring languages Czech , Slovak , Hungarian and Slovenian as well as with the influence of Anglicisms on the German language, whereby he takes a pragmatic approach and rejects nationalistic linguistic purism .

In 2016 he was awarded the Josef Krainer Home Prize.

Publications

  • Rudolf Muhr: Language change as a social phenomenon. An empirical study on sociolinguistic and socio-psychological factors of language change in southern Burgenland . Braumüller, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-7003-0275-4
  • Rudolf Muhr: Getting to know Austrian German . Unidruckerei, Reader, Graz 1993
  • Rudolf Muhr: Austrian German. Linguistic, social-psychological and language-political aspects of a national variant of German . Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-209-01976-2
  • Rudolf Muhr and Richard Schrodt: Austrian German and other national varieties of pluricentric languages ​​in Europe . Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-209-02440-5
  • Rudolf Muhr and Katarína Miková: Ekonomika a cudzie jazyky. Cudzie jazyky a odborná jazyková výučba v krajinách strednej a východnej Európy = economy and foreign languages. On the status of foreign language and technical language training in the CEE countries = Economy and foreign languages . Repro-Horn publishing house, Banská Bystrica 1998, ISBN 80-8055-028-X
  • Rudolf Muhr (Hrsg.): International works on Austrian German and its neighbors-language references . Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-209-01674-7
  • Rudolf Muhr: Austrian Language Diploma in German. Catalogs of learning objectives for basic formulations, lexical speech acts, politeness conventions, discourse and discourse structures, German as a pluricentric language . Öbv & Hpt, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-209-03119-3
  • Rudolf Muhr (Ed.): Eurospeak. The influence of English on European languages ​​at the turn of the millennium . Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna (among others) 2002, 2nd corr. Edition 2004, ISBN 3-631-52324-6
  • Rudolf Muhr (Ed.): Standard variations and language ideologies in different language cultures around the world . Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna (among others) 2005, ISBN 3-631-53212-1
  • Rudolf Muhr: Austrian pronunciation dictionary, Austrian pronunciation database (Adaba) . Lang, Frankfurt am Main; Vienna (among others) 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-55414-2 (incl. CD with 75,964 audio files)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Krainer Home Awards 2016 . Accessed January 24, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Muhr, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Southern Burgenland