The Measure of Our Words, or Taking How We Talk to Each Other Seriously

This paper argues that at the heart of our work as Women in German has been our work on and with language, including the way we use language among ourselves. Using as a paradigmatic example the way in which we have negotiated the use of German—which has meant coming to terms with the significantly different meanings it holds for us, depending on our historical relationship to German culture—it proposes that our willingness to engage the politics of language within Women in German, in our institutional practices and personal relationships, has constituted a fundamental commitment to a transformative politics of and within language. (AB)