Vol. 3 No. 1 (2025): “Beyond Good And Evil”? On the “Ethical Turn” in Literary Studies
General Section

Äugl or Äuglein? Diminutive Forms in Austrian Pop Songs

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Ulrike Thumberger
Pázmány Péter Catholic University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69706/PP.2025.3.1.7

Published 12/31/2025

Keywords

  • diminutives,
  • language variation,
  • language change,
  • German in Austria,
  • Austrian pop music,
  • national identity

Copyright (c) 2025 Ulrike Thumberger

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The usage of diminutive forms has been widely described for spoken and written German in Austria. However, data for the use of diminutives in sung German remains scarce. This study investigates the use of diminutives in Austrian pop songs from two different periods of Austrian pop music, the 1970s and the 2010s. It determines the types and tokens of diminutives in 40 Austrian pop songs, thereby highlighting changes and developments which may be meaningful for the construction of national identity in Austrian pop music.

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