Der geordnete Rückzug. Sprachliche Grenzziehungen von Virolog*innen in Polit-Talkshows

Abstract Since spring 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has presented an international challenge that requires expert knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines. From the very beginning, virological expertise was particularly in demand in order to advise politicians and to inform the population about the virus, its multiplication rate and its spread as well as typical symptoms of an infection. Virological expertise has been mediated through institutions that specialize in science communication and science journalism (e. g. the Science Media Center Germany in Cologne) and to a large extent through mass media. Against this backdrop, this article explores the demarcation practices of virologists in political talk shows. Our corpus consists of 25 political talk shows which were broadcast on publicly available channels in Germany between March 2020 and April 2021. The article addresses the tensions between the domains of science, politics, and media and demonstrates how virologists try to maintain and defend the borders between these domains. On the basis of interactional linguistics, we analyse the pointing practices of three virologists (Melanie Brinkmann, Alexander Kekulé and Hendrik Streeck) to identify crucial demarcation practices employed.