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The paper engages with the works of Thomas Kling (1957-2005) and elaborates on the specific incorporation of history in Klings poetics. Kling was both known for his wild style of lyrical performance as well as for his vast knowledge of history. Kling aptly puts the style of his lectures in the tradition of the "histrion", the actor in ancient Rome. The paper argues that the connection of history and the theatricality of the histrion becomes fundamental to his poetics. History is for Kling a material that combines linguistic, cultural and literary references that need a performative elaboration. The paper traces this constellation of performativity and history within Klings early poems and essays. It then turns towards a reading of his poems "Manhattan Mundraum" and "Manhattan Mundraum Zwei". In these poems Kling intertwines the performative aspects of his poetics with an inquiry into the history that has shaped the island of Manhattan and the language of its "Mundraum".
The focus on communication in research on professional and scientific language somehow reflects the intention of John L. Austin's phrase "How to do things with words?" But a description based on the concept of communication ultimately also relies on linguistic idiosyncrasies. We will look at things the other way round and ask first "how to do (professional) things" and then look at the linguistic units used specifically for this purpose. Professionalism in this view takes very different forms for different types of actions ("practices"). Although reliability and professional authority are central features of all linguistic realizations to be considered, they are represented in very different ways. As a result, professionalism not only shows in the high degree of explicitness of technical prose typical for written scientific discussion. It is also reflected in the high degree of implicitness of speech that accompanies and constitutes practical action.