„Antisemitismus, ganz normal [?]“

Diskriminierungsvorwürfe als Störungen polizeiinterner Diskursordnungen

Abstract

In the public debate about racism and discrimination in the police force, implicit normative expectations regarding the language used by police officers play a role. This in turn often leads to uncertainty in their own use of language. The project of the 'Arbeitsstelle für linguistische Gesellschaftsforschung' at the University of Magdeburg on 'Racist and discriminatory language' is an application-oriented research project in which a workshop program was developed with the aim of raising awareness of racist and discriminatory language, especially for members of the state police. The basis of the workshop concept, problem-centered interviews with members of the Saxony-Anhalt police force, corresponds to the research corpus on which this article is based. Using selected textual evidence, it is possible to show examples of the ways in which internal police discursive orders are disrupted, how these irritation(s) are reacted to linguistically and metacommunicatively, which positionings occur in the context of a 'disruptive incident' and which social actors are involved.