Gratitude slogans in German political communication in the 1930s - 1950s

The article deals with gratitude slogans in German political communication and aims to analyze the functions of such slogans, to identify their fundamental features related to their structure and the meanings they can convey, and to classify the slogans. Data for this study were collected from the minutes of the German governments’ meetings held between 1930 and 1959. Utterances expressing gratitude in political communication are motivational and inspirational in nature because they are aimed at changing the recipient’s emotional condition and are used to change the audience’s attitude toward the problem discussed. The article pays much attention to the classification of gratitude slogans into different types. Such slogans used in political communication in Germany can be divided into three groups: appeals, statements, and slogans comprising the qualities of both appeals and statements. Slogans of all the three types are declarative in nature. In terms of content, a gratitude slogan in political communication can convey: gratitude itself; prognostic gratitude; the need to express gratitude; an appeal to be grateful (can be expressed both implicitly and explicitly); gratitude-manipulation; prognostic ingratitude. Having analyzed the capability of the speech act of gratitude and its combinations with other speech acts, the author has discovered that they are most often combined with demands, appeals, and requests. Such compatibility allows these speech acts to mutually influence each other, which results in gratitude obtaining the features and functional properties of slogans. This study has shown that gratitude slogans have significant influential potential and come in many different forms; however, their historical connection with the language of the Nazi Party had a negative impact on the frequency of use and the expressiveness of such slogans.