The linguistic-ecological potential of Rammstein’s poetics: strategy of verbal destruction and discursive functions

The research aims to identify the linguistic-ecological potential of the poetics of the German rock band Rammstein by analyzing their strategy of verbal destruction and its discursive functions. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that, for the first time, based on a text corpus of Rammstein (258 units), six structural-semantic clusters forming a coherent system of the verbal destruction strategy were identified and characterized in detail: medical and torture terminology, performatives of physical and psychological violence, religious discourse vocabulary, thanatological vocabulary, lexemes expressing disgust and contempt, and lexicon denoting toxicity. Specific lexico-semantic models serve as the primary means of implementing these clusters in Rammstein’s lyrics, operating in two directions: the direct nomination of violence (specialized vocabulary, performatives) and its indirect representation through semantic reinterpretation (desacralization, metaphorization). As a result of the study, it was established that verbal aggression in Rammstein’s discourse is explicated as an intentionally organized, multifunctional discursive mechanism. Specifically, a complex of its functions was described for this material: provocative and critical, deconstructing a worldview, aesthetic and expressive, and phatic.