The problem analysis has been based on the sociopolitical journalism at the turn of the century with a special consideration of texts written before the Polish access to EU. A reference to research concerning changes of Polish national identity due to European integration has also been made. National identity and European identity are not contradictory but ought to be considered as conjunctive.
The lexeme Europe and its functioning in the text has been analyzed. Three groups of meanings are applied to it currently: Europe is a continent, Europe is a culture community, Europe is the European Union. Thus, the modifications of the meaning of an adjective European has been analyzed. It recalls the following connotations: better, perfect, more efficient. This is due to recognition of Western cultural superiority.
The year 1989 was in Poland and many European countries, which were in the orbit of soviet influence, the beginning of revolutionary changes: political, economic, social and cultural ones. These changes also influenced Polish language, which has changed radically for the last 20 years. Among political discourses, the greatest changes concerned the language of politics. Nowadays, it is a diversified way of talking about public affairs, a spectrum which joins different registers and styles. The important reason for its variety is the instability of the Polish political scene, the abundance of political parties, constantly forming new parliamentary groupings and governmental coalition, and the disappearance of others. In the language of the contemporary politics, the lexis is particularly extensive and includes thousands of words referring to public life and the Poles.
The major point in the article is the claim that the language of contemporary politics is getting poorer, looses its elegance and becomes more and more primitive. The author seeks the reason for its pauperization in the trends of contemporary culture. He shows the main features of the phenomenon: the turn towards commonness and informality, emotionality of expressions, hermetic vision of the world, impossibility of a dialogue increase of populist attitudes.
