Koncept demokracji w języku polskim i polskim dyskursie publicznym po 1989 roku
The Concept of Democracy in the Polish Language and Polish Public Discourse After 1989

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to reconstruct the understanding of democracy in Polish based on dictionary, survey and textual sources. It also outlines the different ways in which the concept operates in selected representative varieties of public discourse in Poland after 1989. The study adopts the methodological assumptions and conceptual apparatus of Lublin cognitive ethnolinguistics. The conducted analysis has proven that the basic set of semantic features of democracy, its “basic-level stereotype”, includes primarily social features (with freedom and equality as the dominant ones) and political features (with the understanding of democracy as a form of political system in which it is the people/nation/majority of society who are sovereign), and secondarily also ethical and existential features. The concept of democracy has been subjected to specific modifications (profiling) in various types of public discourse, according to the worldview adopted by the given subject and the system of values professed. The profiling of the concept has been presented on the basis of textual material extracted from the liberal-democratic and left-wing press, on the one hand, and the centre-right press, on the other. It highlights the “typical” (real, actual) picture of democracy of the first twenty years of the systemic transformation in Poland.

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