Summary

Research on political vocabulary has a long tradition in GDR linguistics. Early works, however, could not provide a convincing explanation, due mainly to the stage of development of lexicon theory. From a textual and discursive perspective two topical questions are dismissed: (i) the question of „ideological naming polarities“ in the present time, and (ii) the role of intertextuality for understanding the specific use of a word. Consequences for describing political word meanings are presented. They are taken as temporary semantic consolidations. Text word-token, text word-type and lexicon-word are distinguished as three types of meaning, i.e. as differently enriched representations of knowledge which are closely interrelated.