The invention relates to a method for determining a retransmission mode of a retransmission protocol for data transmissions provided to a communication terminal. Furthermore, the invention relates to the operation of the communication terminal, e.g. a user equipment or relay node, to perform such method, as well as a Node B cooperating with the communication terminal. The invention is inter alia applicable to a 3GPP LTE-A system as standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). In order to suggest a mechanism for determining or dynamically configuring a retransmission mode of a retransmission protocol, the invention suggests a control message format that allows a dynamic signaling of the retransmission mode of a retransmission protocol. The control message is designed to comprise a field that can indicate a plurality of different codepoints. The codepoints are divided into at least two subsets, wherein the codepoints of each subset indicate a respective retransmission mode.