The meeting was attended by the speakers: Katarzyna Kłosinska (linguist, professor at the University of Warsaw), Anna Mierzyńska (PR expert and media analyst), Michal Rusinek (literary scholar, translator, writer) and Adam Laszyn (expert on strategy and crisis communication). The moderator of the debate was Katarzyna Kasia (philosopher, translator, publicist).

While moderating the debate, Katarzyna Kasia started by asking each of the speakers to cite a word that, in their opinion, over the past few years had changed its meaning, or been exploited for political purposes, or had been used by populists, or become the basis for building some kind of information or disinformation strategy.

Prof. Katarzyna Kłosińska cited the word "life". In the rhetoric of the ruling party, it actually meant only a conceived life. She recalled the everyday colloquial name of the ruling party's program called  "pro-life," except that it was not about human life, but about preventing abortions. The word “family”  came from a similar group. We were dealing with a great semantic narrowing of its meaning, because it referred only to the kind of family that those in power imagined.

Those semantic measures are introduced quietly, i.e. the sender of texts makes an agreement with himself/herself that he/she will use words in a certain meaning, and according to him/her, we all share his/her opinion.

According to Prof. Kłosińska, we can also recall the word "patriotism". Admittedly, this is not a matter of recent years, for the Communists already appropriated the word "patriot". In their opinion, a patriot was someone who believed that with the Soviet Union in charge we would have reached eternal happiness. Later, the word was used in contexts that were referred to as national-patriotic - and that was how various groups defined themselves.

Anna Mierzyńska drew attention to the term of a "real Pole." This was a very frequently used slogan by the right wing, which was supposed to mean only that a true Pole was the one who conformed to the Polish identity officially devised by the authorities. It was a Catholic, a traditionalist who was convinced that the role of the family was the most important. - This is certainly a term that is actually quite exclusionary. You can be a Pole and, as it turns out, you can be a "true Pole" who is also a "true patriot  - she said.

- For several years now, we have had a rash of terms describing various ideologies. "Ideologies" are immediately negatively characterized. If something is an ideology, it is bad. The latest relate to a pandemic, using the term of "sanitary apartheid." The latter is meant to reflect the sense of discrimination felt by people who don't want to be vaccinated. The second term is "sanitarianism." There has been even established a parliamentary group on sanitarianism. The sanitarianism is supposed to be a kind of ideology that seeks to have everyone vaccinated and to eradicate COVID for good. As I understand it, the parliamentary team on sanitarianism intends to fight this - the media analyst noted.

The same is true of the term "environmentalism." According to those using the very term, this, too, is a sinister ideology that should be fought. We can also hear about "neo-Marxism," or rather "cultural neo-Marxism." Even anti-culture dictionaries are being written. All these terms are designed to convince others that we have a rash of bad ideologies that are destroying the Polish culture and the true Poles.
 

According to Adam Łaszyn, every election is about something. In this context, it is worth noting the instrumental use of language as a tool. The example of the sentence "LGBT is not people, it's an ideology" shows this very well. First, the term has been tested to see how it affects the public,  and then started to be used in earnest.

- In politics, efficiency is important. Hate and hate speech are not the same thing. Hate has three basic characteristics: it is spontaneous, personal and most often emotional. Hate speech, which is increasingly common in politics, is not spontaneous, instead it is calculating, uses emotion and targets groups. The effectiveness of such word-making is possible when it hits fertile ground. And this is most frightening. In our country such verbal engineering hits very fertile ground - Łaszyn said.

In turn, Michał Rusinek noted a phenomenon of "ethization". - All concepts, words that appear in the public space must be marked in an ethical way. They must immediately be either good or bad. Of course, the fundamental question arises as to what these good ones mean and for whom this "good" is supposed to be. Secondly, it is necessary to pay attention to the phenomenon of "dehumanization." - Both of these processes, i.e., ethization and dehumanization, are linked by the rhetorical figure of antithesis, which we write about in our book titled. "Good Change. Or how to rule the world with words". We divide the whole world by means of language strategies into two, opposite parts. In addition, we divide completely. Those who do not share our vision of the world automatically land on the other side. The aforementioned term "true" is also related to this. First, it immediately conveys an ethical aspect. And secondly, it suggests which side of the antithesis someone or something is on, or  the actions of someone  - Rusinek said.

- Dehumanization also causes us to look at the political scene somewhat differently. Sports metaphors, often used by politicians in relation to their opponents, have been supplanted by war metaphors, while talking about about enemies. The difference is that the opponent should be defeated, and the enemy should be fought or destroyed - the writer noted.

Referring to patriotism, it is worth citing Marcin Napiórkowski's book "Patriotism. "Turbopatriotism." The author shows a return to the 19th-century model and its imposition on us as the only patriotic model. And secondly, as a kind of appropriation. No other model of patriotism comes into play; another one immediately gets a "minus", returning to ethization.

In turn,  Dr. Katarzyna Kasia, the moderator of the meeting, drew attention to the word "normality" and how that one word could exclude others. In addition, the phrase "new normalcy" appeared in a public discourse, and it was difficult to say what it meant.

She also posed another question to the speakers about what can be done to have words regained their proper meaning. How should we speak so as not to fall into deeply carved ruts?

Prof. Katarzyna Kłosińska said that words always lived their own life. On the other hand, using words that are politically charged, but undefined, so nobody could really tell what they meant, led to a situation where anyone could say anything. We felt impunity. The only consequence of using such words was that there appeared even bigger divisions in society.

Referring to Prof. Kłosińska's statement, Anna Mierzyńska added that recently words for specifying voter preferences has been added one after another. Thus, we now have "right-wingers", "left-wingers" and those who are neither right-wingers nor left-wingers. 

Answering Katarzyna Kasia’s question, the media analyst admitted that she has been asking herself this question for many years. She is also not optimistic about the results of any measures that are being carried out to cool the emotions of public debate. According to her, as long as there is no change in the way politics is conducted and the way public space is shaped through language, we stand a poor chance of change in this regard.

According to Adam Łaszyn, in practice we do not have tools to counter this verbal engineering. The influence of politics is greater than any other social environment. Moreover, we have a growing deficit of authorities who could somehow bring the situation under control or point at the the right direction.
 
 Michał Rusinek stated that we were facing a situation of populist rule. - Populism is always attractive. It relieves us citizens from independent thinking, it makes us lazy. We are not required to think critically, independently, but are given ready-made diagnoses. Prof. Michal Glowinski said that propaganda begins when there are ready-made interpretations in the public media instead of information. Actually we are dealing with something like this, so we are lazy. Any antidote to laziness is insanely difficult. This laziness has to lead to some spectacular catastrophe, so that a citizen suddenly wakes up and says "hola, something has to be done about this. Maybe you need to take the matter into your own hands - the literary scholar said.

Professor Rusinek returned to the antithesis. He noted that the same thing happened during the communist era, where everything was black and white, there was an us-them divide. In 1989, a different figure was proposed - diversity. We assume that we are all different, but let's try to get along. There was a desire to find consensus. It should be noted that today this word has disappeared from the public discourse, it has been forgotten. - Let's try to bring something to a situation that is a common good, forget about disputes and work out a vision of Poland, of the world around us, in which we will live well. Maybe we should propose a different language, which will be attractive, but will not be based on the primitive division of we-they and will not be lined with the war rhetoric. Maybe a sense of community can be forged in us - he said.