SCOPE FOR CHALLENGING STEREOTYPES IN THE CONTEXT OF DEFECTIVE CODES OF MEMORY Zbigniew Greń
The subject of our analysis, conducted with the use of linguistic tools, is the phrase “Polish concentration camps.” Our task is to place this phrase in the emotionally charged lexicon, i.e. among language stereotypes, and to suggest actions in the framework of so-called language policy. I will try to make the point that efforts to change this phrase, and even eliminate it from circulation, should not be limited to countering its automatic (conscious or unconscious) reproduction in the media, but need to be accompanied by a policy of eliminating the notion of Polish anti-Semitism (regardless of the elimination of all manifestations of anti-Semitism from Polish public life). This conclusion is drawn from a linguistic, especially lexicological, analysis of the discussed expression and its semantic field (lexical context). I will also propose semiotic methods of conducting language policy regarding the analysed expression, treated as a “pseudo-cognitive” category that distorts the flow of communication. The phrase “Polish concentration camps” functions in public circulation in this form as a cliché. Its meaning is the sum of meanings of its constituents: the ethnic adjective “Polish” (or its equivalents in foreign languages), the locative noun “camp”, and the noun “concentration.” A shift in meaning within the first part makes the phrases in circulation (in English, German) false. We assume that the phrase is false, does not correspond with truth, because the referents were not what they claimed to be – they were not “Polish camps” but “camps in Poland” (in territories attributed to Poland in the past and today). What we have here is a semantic shift/falsification, where the locational adjective “Polish” derived from the locative noun “Poland” becomes an adjective that characterises a group of Poles by its agentive meaning. Thus, a “Polish camp” means “made = established and run by the Poles.” What makes this falsification possible is the polyfunctionality of ethnic adjectives. Additionally, this expression was stripped of its “initial” meanings, and turned into a set phrase that began to live its own life.