"I totally forgot about my suitcase": Divergence between German, Austrien and Prague standard around 1910 shown by Franz Kafka's language management in written German.
Abstrakt
The article investigates Franz Kafka's language management during the process of writing and publishing fiction against the background of the divergence of the language standards in German speaking counties around 1910. Refering to Ulrich Ammon's concept of a social network which defines a standard variety of language, the model character of standard German as used in the German Empire for those German writers in Prague who had the ambition of publishing on an intrnational level will exemplarily be shown.
By means of three regionally defined language forms belonging either to the Austrian or the Prague standard German respectively representing a borderline case of Austrian standard its aim is to make clear that Kafka often but not always felt obliged to implement corrections in his future literary work suggested by language experts who were friends or by editorial interventions of the German publishers who published his prose writing.