Textroutinen und Fokussierungsverfahren

As a rule, scientific texts have the reputation of having a particularly clear and well-considered structure. It can therefore be assumed that a characteristic selection of text-organizing signals can be found here. Text producers usually have a whole range of expressions and procedures at their disposal to comment on, emphasize or relativize certain content, to open, structure or end sections. Important preliminary work in this area was provided by Danuta Olszewska with the concept of metatextemes (2007) and Helmuth Feilke with his reflections on text routines (2012). The aim of this article is to sketch some methods of focusing, i.e. linguistic means and procedures with which a) the recipient‘s attention can be directed to a specific textual object and b) the relevance of an aspect, an evaluation, an insight can be additionally emphasized. The intention is to make a French-German text comparison based on the two classics “Principien der Sprachgeschichte” by Hermann Paul (1880) and “Essai de sémantique” by Michel Bréal (1897).