Forensic linguistics is something that local politicians don’t need to have on a regular basis. why? This special discipline of linguistics attempts to assign confession letters, blackmail letters or wills to specific authors, which is something judges are occasionally confronted with – but local politicians? Maybe in the evening program.
Different in Bamberg. Many are currently dealing with the subtleties of German orthography, punctuation, lexis, syntax and semantics – as well as the question of whether there could be something like a “linguistic fingerprint” with which it is possible to identify a suspected writer from the city council, so to speak convict. That sounds all the more like a hearty soap opera. But it’s the talk of the town in Bamberg.
As usual in a TV soap, you can no longer get along in individual sequels there without the obligatory “What happened so far”. Short version of local politics: Since the beginning of the “bonus affair”, the city has been discussing whether dubious payments to city hall employees (on the basis of which the public prosecutor’s office is investigating) are the scandal – or rather the comprehensive reporting about them. Especially in the Bamberg SPD, which is the head of the town hall, not everyone agrees that the competition for the sovereignty of interpretation is not least being played out in the social networks.
The Bamberg cabaret artist Florian Herrnleben, who is also busy online, noticed the gentlemen Stefan Sandmann, Matthias Franken and Timo Hausdörfer, commentators who are clearly SPD-affine. His request to be allowed to get to know the sinister gentlemen personally (as is usual in a city the size of Bamberg) was complied with as a makeshift solution with virtual self-dissolution: apparently cardboard fellows, created to pleasantly influence public opinion.
A linguist should clarify this
When asked what he thought of such methods as head of the SPD city council, Klaus Stieringer initially put it on record in the BR that he did not find anything of the sort objectionable. He immediately asked for forgiveness, also resigned as faction boss, but kept his seat on the city council and stuck to his statement: He knows these gentlemen, knows them well. But don’t be identical with one of them. Since then, the explanation has been sufficient for the SPD parliamentary group – the humorist Mr. Leben certainly does not want to let it rest.
He asked the linguist Isabelle Thormann, a nationally recognized specialist in forensic linguistics. And indeed, this turned out for a 70-minute Youtube video available, in which she compares the texts of the missing cardboard comrade Sandmann with those of the SPD man Stieringer. Lo and behold: Stieringer and Sandmann are surprisingly similar when it comes to sentence structure, linguistic deviations from the norm, comma errors and all sorts of other things. Apparently, some like to use “But” as a one-word sentence; one also uses identically constructed, rather unusual language images and sometimes does not know how to use “appear” correctly.
When asked, the scientist Thormann admits that she liked doing it – local politics, something different. And no, to consider someone “convicted” without a doubt, that is of course not enough. But if she were to write an expert opinion, she would consider the probability “high” that the result would be that one – Stieringer – was at least very closely at the side of the other when formulating it. There is no such thing as a “linguistic fingerprint” anyway, and it is not “proof” in this respect – but there are concrete “indications” that are very conspicuous in their multitude.
And now? Has the special continuation case in Bamberg become even more bizarre? Almost the entire city council has an opinion, only Stieringer himself does not express himself. The new SPD city council leader Heinz Kuntke – himself a long-time judge – emphasizes that he does not consider his exclusion from the parliamentary group to be tenable for formal legal reasons: What he knows is “no proof – as city councilors we are bound by law and order”. And a high-ranking SPD man from Upper Franconia moans that his party doesn’t even have to stand in the next local elections. Chances of victory? Extremely manageable.
Due to various allegations, a party order procedure against Stieringer is to be initiated this Friday in the SPD subdistrict. “As it looks,” he didn’t serve the public with the truth, explains Andreas Schwarz, a member of the Bundestag. But he also suspects that party exclusions are a long and drawn-out affair. Which, in turn, could be confirmed by political scientists, not linguists.