Cztery rozumienia prawdy w polskich tekstach prawnych.
Four meanings of the “truth” in Polish legal texts.

Summary/Abstract: This text draws on the results of a complex examination of semantic contexts of the word “truth” in the applicable Polish legislation with the use of the tools of computer aided modern legal linguistics. They apply to the legal state as at the beginning of 2014. They do not confirm the thesis, doctrinally more and more widespread, that the legislator applies the word “truth” with a uniform meaning. We can differentiate at least four clearly different contexts for its usage in the legislator’s statements. In the first of them, the “truth” constitutes the opposite of the widely understood “fiction”. The distinctive feature of the second is the “order to tell the truth” given to the addressee of the norm. The distinctive feature of doctrinal generalisations is in this case the notional correlation of the “truth” with the “fact”. The third of the main meanings of this word in the legislation occurs uniquely in the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997. Such a semantic context can be called the “axiological truth”. The fourth meaning of the “truth” in the legislation is related to the notional reaching beyond the language of legal norms. The first two types of contextual occurrences are very important for an answer to the question about the fundamental manner of understanding the word “truth” in the legislator’s parlance. There is an open problem of “epistemological utility” of the word “truth”, especially in the notional correlation with the word “fact’ in the legal language.

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