More Than Words: Klemperer’s Lingua Tertii Imperii as a Network of “Dangerous” Speech Practices

This chapter deals with Victor Klemperer’s observations on the dangerous nature of the Nazis’ usage of German, which constitutes what he called Lingua Tertii Imperii (the Language of the Third Reich). Our aim is to place these observations within the general theoretical framework of dangerous speech studies, integrated with a practice-based conception of language. After highlighting the crucial role played by Klemperer’s work in the understanding of Nazi propaganda, we consider the contextual and content-related factors contributing to violence escalation identified in dangerous speech studies and examine whether (and if so, to what extent) they were also present in Nazi speech. We then argue that its dangerousness depended on how the network of speech practices it constituted led Germans to frame the social fabric they were part of in a distinctive way which mirrored oppressive Nazi ideology. Finally, we discuss two examples of how words used during the Nazi period could activate distinctive speech practices with “poisonous” effects.