Studia Germanistica 12
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The research focuses on the narrative verbalization of mental reactions to the official announcement of 9 November 1989 stating that citizens of the GDR were henceforth permitted to travel to the West. This announcement differs from the type of unexpected information which is readily believable and comprehensible, to which we respond with interjections (change-of-state tokens: oh, ach, ach so) and certain formulations (das glaub ich, ich verstehe). Respondents from both East and West Berlin represented in the "Wende-Korpus" reacted from the cognitive perspective with mistrust and incomprehension, and from the emotional perspective with surprise, which was reflected both in syntactic structure and in the frequent use of metaphors. The report was more frequently interpreted as a joke than as a real event.