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ABSTRACT
The present paper analyses the anti-immigration discourse in Poland in terms of Proximization Theory (PT). PT [Cap, P. (2008). Towards the proximization model of the analysis of legitimization in political discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 17–41; Cap, P. (2010). Axiological aspects of proximization. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 392–407; Cap, P. (2013). Proximization: The pragmatics of symbolic distance crossing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Cap, P. (2017). The language of fear: Communicating threat in public discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; among others] is a cognitive-critical model that accounts for the ways in which the discursive construction of closeness and remoteness can be manipulated in the political sphere and bound up with fear, security and conflict. It reveals how top public actors construe closeness of an external threat, to claim leadership and solicit legitimization of preventive measures to offset the effects of the threat. The present paper applies PT in the domain of state political discourse in today’s Poland, outlining strategies whereby anti-immigration stance and policies are legitimized by discursively constructed fear appeals and other coercion patterns. It demonstrates how the ‘emerging’, ‘growing’, ‘gathering’ threats – physical as well as ideological – are construed by the Polish right-wing government, who thus claim their right to oppose EU immigration agreements and pursue strict anti-immigration measures.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Piotr Cap is Professor of Linguistics and head of the Department of Pragmatics at the University of Łódź, Poland. His interests are in cognitive pragmatics, critical discourse studies, political linguistics, genre theory, and methodology of linguistic analysis. His recent monographic and (co-)edited publications include Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing (Benjamins, 2013), Analyzing Genres in Political Communication: Theory and Practice (Benjamins, 2013), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse (Palgrave, 2017). He is Founding Editor of Lodz Papers in Pragmatics (Mouton de Gruyter) and Managing Editor of International Review of Pragmatics (Brill).
Notes
1 I elaborate on these theoretical points in another paper (Cap, Citationin press), where I provide a comprehensive assessment and comparison of Proximization Theory with other/earlier discourse space models of conceptual opposition and conflict, such as Paul Chilton’s (Citation2004) Discourse/Deictic Space Theory. In the present paper, the theoretical discussion is concise and meant to describe and justify research tools used in subsequent analysis. Although it includes, naturally, some critical points and evaluations, they remain secondary to the empirical aims of the paper.
2 While neither Werth nor Gavins can be described directly as ‘CDA scholars’, their work on ‘text worlds’ lies at the core of discourse space models (such as DST), which have been amply applied in CDA (see below).
3 In addition to a group of theories focused specifically on conceptual metaphor (e.g. Charteris-Black, Citation2005; Goatly, Citation2007; Musolff, Citation2004, Citation2016).
4 Chilton’s model was originally proposed in 2004/2005, as ‘Discourse Space Theory’. In later years, the author has often used the word ‘Deictic’ to replace ‘Discourse’ (e.g. Chilton, Citation2010, Citation2011). Finally, throughout his 2014 monograph, Chilton calls his model ‘Deictic Space Theory’ (Chilton, Citation2014). I have speculated on possible reasons for this change in Cap (Citation2013, Citation2014, Citation2015). Interested reader is also referred to Cap (Citationin press), which contains a comprehensive evaluation of DST.
5 As this paper is predominantly qualitative in scope, it cannot possibly demonstrate the full linguistic/lexical powers of the axiological proximization framework, nor those of the other types. Interested readers are referred to Cap (Citation2013, Citation2014, Citation2015), which are all balanced qualitative-quantitative studies. For instance, in Cap (Citation2015) lemma counts (raw and percentage) from the axiological framework are provided for different-time discourse corpora, to document changes in the lexical intensity of axiological proximization over time. That article also includes an extended discussion of the relationship between axiological and spatial proximization.
6 In examples (1)–(8) the markers of us and them appear in bold/italic and bold, respectively.
7 In fact, the EC proposal included the figure ‘€250,000’.
8 The Civic Platform party, ruling Poland between 2007 and 2015.
9 This statement was made 6 days after an Islamic terrorist attack, in which a truck was deliberately driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, killing 84 people and injuring 434. These and forthcoming translations by P.C.
10 From a lexical standpoint, consolidation of the home camp occurs also deictically, through the use of such items as ‘we’ and ‘our’ – though they are not, technically, carriers of values.
11 The apparent variety of lexico-grammatical forms carrying them-related characteristics in the Polish anti-immigration discourse begs consideration of the conceptual heterogeneity of the 2nd category in the axiological proximization framework. I discuss this theoretical issue elsewhere (Cap, Citationin press).
12 The ‘remote possibility’ phrases are marked in bold/italics, and the ‘actual occurrence’ phrases in bold.
13 A refugee camp in Turkey, run by the UN Refugee Agency.
14 Szydło’s argument earns extra credibility by reference to traditionally ‘Polish’ values, such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ (example 9). The latter are thus not only self-standing axiological markers of the us camp (as described in 3.2); they also contribute, together with other co-occurring items, to complex discourse scenarios involving proximization of them entities.
15 Numerous examples of such narratives can be found in news broadcasts on the Polish public television, which the latter remains these days under complete control of the L&J government. Typically, they consist of a series of materials (by different journalists) which begins with reports from refugee camps in Western Europe, followed by ‘seemingly unrelated’ footages of terrorist acts in West European cities. Next, there is usually an interview with a senior EU official, or perhaps a report from an EU meeting, which, the correspondent will argue, ‘continues to demonstrate’ an ‘unconcerned’, ‘thoughtless’ attitude to immigration on the part of the EU government. Lastly, there is likely to be a report from the Polish Ministry of the Interior (which reveals an opposite attitude), or else, Polish law-enforcement agencies are pictured ‘on duty’ to prevent terrorist acts in Poland. While the connection between immigration and terrorism is perpetuated by virtually all information programs on the Polish public TV, the ‘leader’ seems to be Channel 1 (TVP 1) and their evening news program (‘Wiadomości’), broadcast daily between 7:30 and 8:00 PM (see https://wiadomosci.tvp.pl/).
16 The corpus (124 speeches) includes between 6 and 8 speeches per month.
17 According to Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej – Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS).