My i Inni - ewolucja wyobrażeń : polski dyskurs prasowy w świetle imagologii i pamięci zbiorowej

Abstract

The book discusses issues from the area of imagology – interdisciplinary studies on the perceptions of nations and countries, documented both in texts and in the structures of languages, and of humanistic memorology – a field that describes processes of collective memorizing, forgetting, and recollecting facts of the past events that might have influenced the shaping of collective memory by means of methods available to humanists (philologists, linguists, and predominantly ethnolinguists and discourse researchers). The article’s primary aim is to depict the evolution of – characteristic of the 20thand 21st-century Polish linguistic culture – images of nations and countries, to present the ways they have been shaped by means of measures available in press discourse, as well as to capture a special role of historical data predestined by those who govern the discourse to remember or to forget. This is connected with perceptions of proper construction of canon of values and memory topoi of the Polish culture. The study encompasses three time periods: the years 1942/1943, 1989/1990, 2011/2012. Out of each period two press titles of different line of ideas and representing various communities are selected. In the case of the Second World War (chapters entitled “1942/1943. Wojna. Czas walki o przetrwanie” [The War: Time of Struggle for Survival]) those are “Biuletyn Informacyjny,” an underground weekly of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and “Nowy Kurier Warszawski,” a rag daily published in Polish by Germans for Poles. The analysis concerning the period of political transformation (chapters entitled “1989/1990. Przełom. Czas przebudowy system” [Breakthrough: Time of Restructuring the System]) includes “Gazeta Wyborcza” – associated with the labour union “Solidarność” – and “Trybuna Ludu” – an organ of the Polish United Workers’ Party. The last period, 2011/2012, a time of Poland’s institutional involvement in the structures of the European Union, where the aftermath of evolutionary transformations can be seen (Chapter Five), includes “Uważam Rze. Inaczej pisane” (conservative) and “Polityka” (leftist). The method applied in the book is discourse analysis. Apart from the basic tools of cultural and cognitive linguistics, the analysis also applies some concepts of multi-layered discourse analysis of Ingo Warnke and Jürgen Spitzmüller, the French School of Imagology of Daniel-Henry Pageaux, and Peter Stockwell’s cognitive poetics that has been appropriated to press texts analysis. Introduction and Chapter One entitled “Pamięć zbiorowa a imagologiczny aspekt dyskursu publicznego. Problemy, źródła i metody badania” [Collective Memory and Imagological Aspect of Political Discourse. Issues, Sources, and Research Methods] contain basic information on the issues discussed in the book, research methods, and sources. Chapter Two, “Konfiguracje sieci wyobrażeń o narodach i państwach i kodowanie wyobrażonego kontekstu w tekstach” [Configuration of the Network of Perceptions of Nations and Countries, and Coding an Imagined Context in Texts], shows that global organisation of the network of cultural conceptualisations can be reconstructed on the basis of press texts. They have been grouped in appropriate clusters. The chapter presents the reasons, ideological and pragmatic in character, that influence the grouping of nations and taking others from the clusters of definitions in network. It also pays attention to a changeable salience of cultural conceptualisations. In reference to 1942/1943, they have been discussed on the examples of images of nations and countries which took part in a war and allied blocks (i.e. of Poland and Poles, of Germans, the Soviet Union, America, Hungary, and of people associated with those countries). The analysis of the period 1989/1990 shows the configuration of images of nations and countries concerning Western countries and satellite states to the Soviet Union, as well as the phenomenon of broadening one’s ideological space and broadening a cluster that it motivates (on the example of the African countries: Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and China). Chapter Three, “Dominanty tematyczne dyskursu i ich wpływ na kształtowanie się wyobrażeń o narodach i państwach” [Discourse Thematic Dominants and Their Impact on the Shaping of Images of Nations and Countries], maintains that the most important themes at a time, presented in accordance with the ideology of a given press issue, force us to adopt a certain point of view in our perception of different nations and countries, and in consequence, their divergent and innovative at times, characteristics. The chapter deals with the following dominants: liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto along with the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the Polish-Czechoslovak confederation, the fall of Stalingrad, Katyń (1942/1943), Revolutions of 1989 and Perestroika (i.e. political transformation), and 50th anniversary of the Second World War (1989/1990). Also, the chapter shows the impact those dominants have on the perceptions of Poles, Germans, Russians, Czechs, Hungarians, and Jews. Chapter Four, “Teraźniejszość i historia. Układy pamięci zbiorowej” [The Present and History. Patterns of Collective Memory] discusses the issues of the conceptualisation of the communal time seen as the element of the collective identity, and it also shows the attitude of the authors, whose writings have been analysed, to collective identity. In both periods, the war and the breakthrough, the focus is on the present time, a time of rapid changes; however, in the analysed papers the evaluation of the status quo, perceptions of the role of a man in the present time as well as vision of the future are different. Also, the steps leading to the shaping of collective memory are different. During the Second World War “Nowy Kurier Warszawski” (a rag daily) proposes a vision of the future adjusted to the vision of the thousand-year Deutsches Reich, and on behalf of the underground authorities a conspirational weekly of the Home Army cares for a proper repetition of the elements of collective memory. In a breaktrough period, “Trybuna Ludu” celebrates the memory of selected past events, whereas “Gazeta Wyborcza” offers the readers history lessons on topics hitherto undiscussed at school, sometimes providing a new interpretation. Chapter Five, “Wyobrażenia o narodach i państwach w ewolucji” [Images of Nations and Countries in Evolution] is devoted to the condition of discourse in 2011/2012. Analyses of texts from weekly opinion magazines concern the selected most crucial characteristics of Poland and Poles and their neighbouring countries: Russia and Russians, Germany and Germans, Jews, Czechs, Slovakians, and Hungarians. Analysing their actual descriptions, the chapter searches for traces of the presence of conceptualisations set in the previous epochs and innovative visions. In the Conclusion, in form of questions and answers, the author formulates conclusions on the perceptions of nations seen as a category of collective memory (i.e. how the way of writing about nations changes, what we remember from past perceptions of nations, what we forget, why we constantly feel the urge to speak about nations and their memory).