Terminological Innovations in International Relations: Emergence and Diffusion

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The purpose of this interdisciplinary project is an analysis of terminological change in discourses on international relations. Moreover, the project aims to explore the diffusion of terminological innovations from the academic language of International Relations (IR), a sub-discipline of political science, into discourses of political practitioners. Accordingly, the key research questions are as follows: How do terminological innovations emerge within the academic IR discourse? How do such innovations diffuse in Germany from the academic into the political discourse? What schools of IR are particularly successful in this regard? To answer these questions we will create a tripartite corpus, consisting of a) academic publications on the subject matter of international relations (this corpus is internally divided into an international, English-language section and German language publications on international relations); b) policy papers issued by think tanks and the scientific service of the German Bundestag; c) verbatim records of the Bundestag on issues of international relations and documents of the German foreign office. With the help of that tripartite corpus we are planning to analyze how, and in what timeframe, terminological innovations diffuse from the academic discourse into political advisory documents and political discourses proper. The falsifiable starting hypothesis is that terminological innovations should originate from academic discourse and diffuse into political advisory and parliamentary debate from there. However, our research design is able to document the reverse path as well, in case that terminological innovations originate from policy papers or political discourses. In any event, our project will go beyond mere description and strive to identify, by way of comparison, possible patterns and causal pathways in the career of terminological innovations. The goal is to spot the conditions under which terminological innovations are particularly successful.