The volume presents the proceedings of an expert conference held in Dresden on the history of the German language. The papers focus particularly on the discussion of the "new" methods of "new" language history. In addition, the volume contains historical case studies from the period between 1800 and 1933. A third section concentrates on the historical links between the German language and ist Slavonic neighbours Polish, Russian and Czech.

27 German studies scholars and one philosopher have contributed these essays in honour of Helmut Henne. The subject matter ranges from reflection on the dialogic principle, the linguistic analysis of literary texts, contributions on the history of language critique, the critical discussion of lexicological and lexicographic issues, the historical, systematic and contrastive/intercultural study of important problems in semantics and pragmatics all the way to selected issues in the theory of German studies as a scholarly discipline. The unifying link between most of the articles is the clear allegiance to (lexical) semantics and to an awareness of tradition and the historical perspective. As such, the volume is not merely a kaleidoscopic survey of present-day German language studies; at the same time, it reflects the present state of scholarly debate in an approach to semantics enriched by pragmatics and geared to lexicographic, literary and language-critical concerns. The festschrift contains a complete list of Helmut Henne's publications.