Page 212 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

190 Helga Kotthoff

esteem in the best, most pathos-laden linguistic forms earn the admiration of the
entire table society.
By comparison, the toasts of the Germans are usually as compact and to-the-
point as the toast given by one of the organizers of the conference in Alma-Ata,
which is transcribed and translated below.

Data 4
D: A German philologist
1 D: the conference (–) was cooperatively prepared and
2 organized and carried out and brought to a good conclusion,
3 (–) but let me just say (?briefly?);
4 (–) the DAAD, (–) the Goethe Institute (–) have worked together,
5 which functioned on a very good common ground,
6 (–) we have got a lot,
7 we have got quite a lot of things (–) set up (––)
8 and, uh, I’m glad
9 this conference (–) has been such a great success,
10 it would not (–) have succeeded so well,
11 had not the (–) foreign languages institute
12 (–) contributed (–) in a fundamental way.
13 so for this reason I now want to raise a glass (––)
14 to (–) the future (–) University of Linguistics in Alma Ata.

The philologist D actually only thanks the three organizers who brought the
conference together, and then he offers his toast to the host university. He as-
cribes to it an important role in achieving the conference’s success. But he
praises neither the university nor its assembled teachers and their families. He
does not engage in raising the values of shared goals or achievements. It is thus
not surprising that Georgians, Russians and Kazakhs often characterize the
speeches of Germans with sober matter-of-factness.
In the West, speeches of praise to persons present are incomparably less fre-
quent, and toasts play a much smaller role in the society’s genre household than
in the territories of the former Soviet Union. They are, in fact, usual only at cer-
tain festivities, like marriages and graduation parties. At the most, two or three
are offered, but never a chain of ten to twenty (as is common in Georgia), and
even these are often undermined or framed with humour and irony. On German
internet pages toasts can be found almost exclusively in humoristic contexts,
and even at weddings it is usual for parents and relatives to spice their good
wishes for the bride and groom with little jokes and humorously revealing
stories. The attitude of pathos is met with scepticism.
In other contexts it is also unusual for Germans to come forth with explicit
moral praise for persons present, for example, in the form of “Mr. Giorgi is a won-