THE USE OF EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVES IN THE PLENARY SESSIONS OF THE GERMAN FEDERAL PARLIAMENT

Abstract

This paper deals with the analysis of evaluative adjectives in the corpus consisting of the stenographic reports of two plenary protocols of the sessions in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) in 2015 and 2018. The distribution of evaluative adjectives according to Trost (2006) serves as the theoretical basis for the analysis of evaluative adjectives. It is first shown whether all subgroups of evaluative adjectives can be found in the analysed corpus and, if so, what is evaluated with them and how. In the last chapter of the paper, it is then also shown which subgroups of the evaluative adjectives occur most frequently and the result is explained and justified in relation to typical parliamentary discourse. The paper also compares the use of evaluative adjectives by opposition and government politicians, but also the frequency of use of these adjectives in two sub-corpora (2015 and 2018).