Man and Technology. Controversial discourses on the machanization of the living world

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Since 1990, the technologisation of the living world has been the subject of a wide range of mostly controversial debates in various stages and phases. Throughout, the relationship of humans to technology has been one of the central themes of public discourse. This is particularly evident in the area of bioethical and medical ethics discourses (funding phase 1), but also in discourses on digitalisation (funding phase 2). In both areas, the influence of technological developments on humans is negotiated within the framework of social and political debates. These negotiations ultimately have an impact on the underlying image of man, which manifests itself linguistically in the discourses. The project pursues three major goals: Firstly, it aims to present a linguistic discourse history of the relationship between humans and technology with regard to the discourses since 1990 as forementioned; it focuses on the linguistic constructions of the mechanisation of the lifeworld with regard to biomedical technologies and their ethical implications. The second aim of the project is to contribute to the development of collaborative corpus linguistic methods in the overall project, whereby the analysis of the lexical, argumentative as well as the level of speech acts leads into the analysis of the discursive level. The basis for this is a text corpus of various types of texts from central, opinion-forming media on the one hand and from statements by relevant associations (Ethics Council, Ethics Committees, etc.) and political parties, reports on commission work by political parties, transcriptions of talk shows, texts from the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, statements by relevant reference centres (DRZE), dossiers from the Federal Agency for Civic Education and specific issues of the journal Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte on biomedical and bioethical discourses on the other. In particular, discourses on reproductive technologies and the handling of embryos, pre-implantation diagnostics, prenatal genetic blood tests, germ line interventions/germ line therapies, abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia and palliative medicine as well as transplantation medicine and organ donation are taken into account. With regard to the interpretative analysis categories, a tagset will be developed collaboratively in exchange with the other subprojects, which will then be applied to the entire text corpus.Thirdly, the project also includes a third, enlightening goal. This consists of using corpus linguistic analysis to reveal linguistic structures and mechanisms of discursivation and change of meaning in biomedical and ethical discourses (funding phase 1) and in discourses on digitalisation (funding phase 2) with regard to the relationship between humans and technology and thus make them comprehensible.