Patriotyzm genetyczny, półka kulturowaandPalikotyzacja X-a– blends as catchwords in Polish political discourse

Abstract

Catchwords and catchphrases denoting crucial ideological concepts or disqualifying an opponent serve as indices pointing to the line of demarcation between political camps. Using the example of three catchwords (Patriotyzm genetyczny genetic patriotism, pka kulturowa cultural shelf, Palikotyzacja X-a Palikotization of X) emerging in the aggravated political debate in Poland between 2000 and 2009, and mainly signaling affiliation with the national conservative PiS-party, a twofold approach combining methods from discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics is proposed. On the one hand, the lexical items are analyzed as keywords in statu nascendi which are disputed, quoted or ridiculed and serve as intertextual hinges which still have the potential to evoke the communicative situation in which they have been created. On the other hand, the selected newly created lexical items are analyzed as conceptual integration networks within the framework of blending theory. The blending analysis reveals the underlying logic of the novel conceptual structure and displays the explanative and argumentative pattern suggested by the blend and condensed in the catchword. By tracing the disputes elicited by these catchwords and analyzing sequences in which these newly created concepts are contested or maintained from a cognitive perspective, we can see how the logic suggested by the blend is either perpetuated or perverted in the process of the ongoing dissemination of the catchword.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.