Metalinguistische Kommentare zur Vermessung der neuen sprachlichen Heimat Deutschland in Saša Stanišićs Herkunft

In this paper, metalinguistic self-reflectory remarks on the German language, made by the author Saša Stanišić in his book Herkunft, are analyzed. After a brief introduction (1.), the state of research on and reception of Herkunft (2.) and a brief section on (auto)biographical writing and migration (3.), the theoretical backdrop, focusing on Roger Sell’s notion on literary pragmatics, is presented (4.). It is subsequently intertwined with Karl Bühler’s Organon Model and Klaus Brinker’s connection of text functions to Searle’s types of illocutions (5.) to form the framework of the analysis. Then, the focus shifts to the analysis itself (6.), which is centred around a chapter titled Bruce Willis spricht Deutsch [Bruce Willis Speaks German]. The article concludes with a summary of the main findings (7.).