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Anna Cegieła : What is hate speech?
The expression hate speech should be replaced
with a more precise term hate rhetoric or hate
strategy. It comprises three types of linguistic
behaviour: building an image of an individual or
a group composed of discrediting and stigmatising
characteristics that form a stereotype; reinforcing
this image in a manner that creates the impression
that the individual or the group poses a threat to
an imaginary order, is its enemy (dehumanisation
and demonisation of the image of the enemy), and –
based on such a justification – arousing the sense of
duty to discriminate, marginalise or eliminate it. Hate
rhetoric is pursued from the position of people in
power (not necessarily literally), its nature is
substitutionary for acts of violence and constitutes
infringement on the human right to equality and
dignity.
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Paweł Kuciński : Invented morality. The value system and nationalism
In the proposed text, I am discussing the rightist
radical instrumentalisation of the term “ethics”; I am
contrasting the nationalist radical/invented ethics
with the universal notion of ethics. This paper
presents the path followed by the notions of good,
evil and ethics itself in the Polish national radical
discourse in the 1930s. From Zygmunt Balicki, to
nationalist poems, the national word, and thus the
notions of ethics, strive for radicalisation of
meanings, the carriers of which is the ideology if
radical nationalism, and in this sense they support
politics rather than universal ethics, from which – as
I am emphasising – they are stolen by the totalitarian
entity. The word used for the purposes of political
loyalty is not only a carrier of relative ethical values
but also a method of hiding them, especially those
which are contradictory to the “nationalist” ethics.
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Agnieszka Budzyńska-Daca : Eristic and ethics
The presented research proposition concerns the
issue of ethics of eristic. Attention is given to the
differences between the classical concept of eristic
and the contemporary suggestions for its definition.
Conditions of ethical participation in a dispute, based
on the rhetoric ethos of the speaker, are formulated.
Eristic communication behaviours are considered
here unethical when the speaker does not assume
responsibility for the changes caused by his or her
utterance in a rhetoric situation, that is also when he
or she participates in the dispute as an anonymous
person. Attention is also drawn to the mechanism
of penetrating eristic argumentation from individual
disputes to the area of the so-called public debate.
The attitude to eristic presented in the literature
regarding legal rhetoric and an utterance of
a politician about manners of participating in a
dispute are demonstrated. The latter encourages
the formulation of a postulate that responsibility
for the word be one of significant categories for
evaluating a politician.
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Jakub Z. Lichański : Dependent symbols and rhetoric. Discussions on the margin of the logical and rhetorical analysis of expressions such as ethics of the word
Expressions such ethics of the word belong,
according to the theory of descriptions by Sir
Bertrand Russell, to the so-called incomplete symbols.
This does not change the fact that they are frequently
used both in everyday language, which is not
surprising, and in the language of science, which is
a serious shortcoming. This discussion is an attempt
to analyse this type of expressions in two ways
and demonstrate the related difficulties. The basic
ones involve the determination of designatum of
expressions; yet equally serious difficulties are related
to the fact that their elliptic nature causes semantic
difficulties, and the trouble with the designatum
makes the semantic scope of an expression unclear.
However, one could ask whether such a conduct
is appropriate if the intuitive understanding of such
expressions causes no serious trouble. The author
believes, however, that there are considerable
difficulties in determining, among others, the
semantic scope of expressions such as ethics of
the word, methods of qualifying other expressions
as, for instance, ones violating the principles set with
phrases such as ethics of the word, etc., at the level
of the so-called intuitive understanding. The general
question is one about the applicability of the tools
of the theory of rhetoric to solve the identified logical
problems.
This paper is an attempt to present a solution to
the indicated problems.
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Marzena Makuchowska : A foetus or a child? About linguistic establishment of the status of the human being
The 20th-century linguistic turn resulted in such
a perception of language that allowed seeing it not
only as a tool for communicating reality but also as
an instrument serving the purpose of creating its
image. Therefore, it is assumed that the language
practice (discourse) of various entities strives for
establishing the meanings created thereby in the
general awareness. What senses are popularised is
considered by the so-called critical discourse analysis
an issue that is not indifferent to the social life. This
paper discusses the issue of determining the ontic
status of the human foetus by diverse opposing and
competing discourses, conventionally called antiabortion
and pro-abortion. The former uses
expressions with the word child, stressing that
nasciturus (Lat. ‘to be born’) belongs to the category
HUMAN BEING. The latter, in turn, advocates names
such as foetus, abortion, termination of pregnancy,
attributing the status of a child to a born person only;
what also serves the purpose of reducing the ontic
significance of nasciturus is various text strategies
and, as a result, nasciturus is ranked lower than the
human being in the so-called great chain of being.
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Laura Polkowska : Violating parliamentary ethics in the period 2001–2012
This sketch is an attempt to synthesise the
parliamentary utterances that violate parliamentary
ethics in the period 2001–2012, that is over the past
four terms of office of the Sejm. Those utterances
frequently included vocabulary from the semantic
field of a lie and treachery, nouns which negatively
evaluate the intellectual capacity of the person being
their object, as well as words-labels, which are nearly
devoid of their dictionary meanings and at the same
time are characterised by as extensive negative
connotation as possible. What also attracts attention
is the increasingly more frequent colloquialisation
and vulgarisation of the language of politics. This text
also attempts to answer the question whether the
Sejm Komisja Etyki Poselskiej (the Deputy Committee
on Ethics) is capable of influencing the level of the
contemporary political debate in Poland.
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Milena Adaszek-Waliszczak : Dogs, wolves, geese, nutrias, that is... about animal lexis in the language of politics
The paper titled Dogs, wolves, geese, nutrias, that
is… about animal lexis in the language of politics is
a text describing functions of animal lexis in the
negative political communication. This paper is
composed of a theoretical part including comments
about insults and their types, the persuasive use of
metaphor, or evaluation in political texts, and an
analytical part, where selected 21st-century utterances
of politicians are briefly discussed. Analyses of the
lexical material unambiguously prove that animalisms
used as political insults aim to attribute negative
characteristics to an opponent, ridicule, dehumanise
him or her, threaten recipients, and at times also
create the need to eliminate the opponent. What
emerges from the analysis of political insults is an
anti-image of a politician, who is dangerous, deceitful,
double-faced, intolerant, etc. In their utterances,
senders negatively evaluate other politicians who pose
a threat to them or do not acknowledge moral, social
and cognitive values. Unfortunately, such an attitude
of senders is only declarative, since the shape of the
analysed utterances, their manipulative aggressive
nature clearly indicate that the senders themselves
display many of the characteristics which should,
according to them, be discrediting for a politician.
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Krzysztof Kaszewski : What does an unsatisfi ed customer write about the seller? An analysis of negative comments in the Allegro.pl website
In this paper, I am analysing negative
comments of users of Allegro.pl – the largest Polish
auction website. The examination aimed to identify
the linguistic devices used by unsatisfied customers
towards the seller and the degree to which their
utterances satisfied politeness requirements. Ca. 450
negative comments were analysed.
The analyses proved that purchasers often write
about the seller, about his or her characteristics
or behaviour. The majority of Allegro users observe
elementary etiquette principles but impolite
behaviours are not infrequent, either: powerful,
negative evaluations of the seller or his or her actions,
or attributing him or her negative characteristics.
Polite weakening of judgement is rare, while
reinforcing and radicalising negative evaluations is
more often the case.
