The paper presents an outline of the systemtheory of Niklas Luhmann. The foci here are the basic conceptual decisions of his approach, the relationship between systems-, media- and theory of social evolution on the one hand and the status of systemrationality and the rationalization of lifeworld on the other. One aspect of Luhmann's theorizing will be discussed critically, namly the status of relationship between structure and process of the social integration in terms of norms which regulate the interaction process.

Public Opinion in the United States of America can rightfully be described as an important part of everyday life. It is shaped by different structural constraints as well as through social interaction. In order to relate public Opinion and political Culture it is therefore necesary to begin with methodological presuppositions. In this article a qualitative macro-sociological approach is put foreward instead of methodological individualism. It is argued that it is possible to delineate elements of the political culture within the realm of public opinion from a cultural standpoint.American political culture is used here to illuminate some traits of public opinion: Republicanism, the Liberal Tradition, Populism, Civil Religion and a specific brand of american Can-do-Philosophy.Vied form this perspective political culture as well as public opinion in the United States provide a system of complex world views which might best be interpreted through the schema approach known form cognition psychology. Criticism form communitarians as well as from multiculturalists against a supposedly closed system of every-day has to therefore be rejected.

The individual disciplines of the social sciences appear to be divided as if they were concerned with different objects but they are united through many of the questions which they are asked to answer. Although the individual disciplines were about to be institutionally separated at the time of the historical school major proponents of the historical method like Schmoller were still able to combine the different approaches in a unified framework The psychology of individuals establishes a link between social behaviour and economic interests. The intuuitive method allows to understand analogies between different manifestations of the lifestyle in a nation. There have to be coherent ethical norms for individual behaviour; social integration and economic cooperation. The article describes how Schmoller came to treat ethics as a unifying principle of sociological and economic research, starting from observations on the unifying power of culture in Germany in the classical period. Lessons are drawn for modern interdisciplinary research by examining examples of topical research projects.

The concept "Präsenzfigur" combines conversation analysis and objektive Hermeneutik to show how language structure and social meaning are related. The concept concentrates on the local sensitivity of interactional structures. Empirical data are not taken to show the realization of contextfree general structures (e.g. turn taking conditional relevance). Contextsensitivity is analysed both as document and result of the selectivity, inherent in the participants’ activities in contributing to the local construction of social organization according to their dominant orientations as participants. For empirical analysis a four step modell (including maximal and minimal contrast) is proposed.

This paper is concerned with the question which role intentions play in verbal action. In many (mainly cognitively oriented) branches of linguistic research, as well as in the philosophy of language, it is (often implicity) assumed that speakers' intentions are the most important element for the explanation of linguistic behavior. This position has also been challenged, however, mainly by anthropologically and sociolinguistically oriented scholars. In this paper I will try to adress this issue in the framework of a more general discussion concerning the functionality of language. In the first section I will briefly consider the framework sketched in the first part to discuss the arguments which have been put forward in the literature against the intention-dominated view of linguistic behavior.

I shall propose that the primary form of all references is that reference to ourselves that we normally express when we use the first-person pronoun. In the case of believing, this reference may be called 'direct attribution'. Our reference to all other things is by way of such reference to ourselves. I shall argue that; although we express ourselves in first-person sentences, the reference to ourselves that we thus express does not involve the acceptance of first-person proposition- for, I shall contend, there is no good reason to assume that there are such propositions. The primary form of believing is not a matter of accepting propositions; it is a matter of attributing properties to pneself I am the primary object of my own attributions and the properties are the content

There has always been criticism against the "Theory of Communicative Action". Some aspects of criticism were terms such as "Communicative Action" or "Strategic Action", the postulate of "two distinct types of interaction" and the thesis of the "primacy of non-strategic communication".Habermas answered his critics in a number of essays and replies. The numerous modifications and reformulations don't make orientation in this field easier, however. In this essay the criteria which Habermas uses to characterize communicative and strategic action shall be named. It then has to be discussed whether these distinctive criteria are sufficient to justify the dichotomy of two types of interaction. Finally, Habermas' argumentation in favor of the primacy of non-strategic communication shall be outlined and scrutinized under the aspect of plausibility

Illocutionary acts are best looked upon as being communicative acts. Reasons are eiven for this thesis) which is quite contrary to what classical Speech Act Theory (SAT) holds to be true. It is proposed to define illocutionary intentions via (some very special sort of) perlocutionary intentions. This is not to deny the importance of this central SAT- aistmction, to the contrary, it is suggested that this distinction be reconcilable with the basic concepts of a theory of communicative actions.

It is shown that at least part of the terminology of the theory of speech acts can be methodically introduced within the constructive ortholanguage-programm. There is evidence that a methodical constraint leads the reconstruction of the basic speech-act-types from requests via statements to questions. Moreover there is evidence that requests and questions don't involve "propositional acts".

Any classification of illocutionary acts to be well-founded has to be based on logical principles characteristic of the different types of these acts; and the relevant principles nave to be couched in terms of general action theory. This approach is specified for informatives and directives, and the essential connections between these two (most basic?) types of illocutionary acts are explicated and diagrammed - showing the primacy of informatives. Discussion of why, in talking about communicative acts, some divergence from ordinary language is to be recommended.

The object of this paper is to provide an overview of several concepts of linguistic discourse research. The central question is the relationship between a Speech Act Theory (SAT) on the one hand and a Discourse Theory (DT) on the other, in the first section, Searle’s SAT is compared to Ethnomethodologv against the background of a brief explanation of linguistic discourse research in the 19th century. Following this is a review of two concepts, one which pleads for a ’pure' SAT without any reference to discourse (Motsch), and one which proposes replacing a SAT by a linguistic DT (Weigand). The article concludes with an overview of a range of concepts which attempt to mediate between a SAT and a DT.

Most texts on argumentation theory stress the importance of formal logic for the study of arguments. This paper raises some doubts about the usefulness of logic for the study of argumentation. In fact\ the basic analogy between logical proofs ana arguments in natural language does not seem to hold. There seems to be a basic circularity in everday arguments which cannot be reconstructed by the standard logical tools. Therefore we habe to look for some non-logical forms of representation. Some hints for this new type of argument representation are given.

Aim of the deliberation is to identify the presuppositions for the analysis of use of language on the level of semantic interpretation. Pragmatics has no self-sufficiency semantic core-theory. The requirements of theories in semantic are discussed ana further the consens and disserts of the approaches in semantic analysis is demonstrated. Special references are the problem of analytic and synthetic (W.v.O. Quine. J.J. Katz, S. Haack, H. Pumam, D. Davidson), the debat about B. Russells analysis of denoting and the critics of P.F. Strawson ana K.S. Donnellan. The non-self-sufficiency of the semantic conceptualization on the level of pragmatics is valid even though semantic is deliminated through pragmatics.

This article tries to give a partial answer to the question how to analyse and describe verbal quarreling and squabbling by investigating three types of speech acts: reproaching, insisting and calling someone names. A distinction is being drawn between interaction in conflict and quarreling. Essential features of quarreling-specific speech acts are to be seen in their expressive ana offending quality in connection with certam situational factors. In a methodological perspective the focus is set upon the rules of emotion management in dialogical situations and on the relation of pragmatical linguistics to psychology and sociology.

In part lit will be analysed the genesis of the term "lifeworld" in context of E. Husserl’s philosophy. In the Crisis of European Science Husserl shows that the Doxa has a special significance compared to Episteme. This corresponds with Hussser's thesis that the world of science requires always the lifeworld. The lifeworld is the result of the anonymous cons- titution of the transcentental ego. This constitution should be demonstrated in Husserl’s "ontology of lifeworld".In part II it will be demonstrated the constitution of the lifeworld not in terms of the transcendental philosophy but in terms of the existencial philosophy. It appears that for the genesis of the lifeworld the experience of the confidence Has a constituent function, primary the confidence of the child in its mother. In this relationship the child improves the confidence. If this relationship will be broken so this has negative consequences for the following life.In Kafka’s story "Der Bau" will be demonstrated the situation in which the confidence is broken. The story shows that the lifeworld is the result of the individual experience.