Między semantyką historyczną a kontekstem społecznym epoki — o języku politycznym szlachty Rzeczypospolitej
Between Historical Semantics and the Social Context of the Era — on the Political Language of the Polish Nobility

Summary/Abstract: Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz’s book Dyskurs polityczny Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów. Pojęcia i idee (Political Discourse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Concepts and Ideas [Toruń, 2018]) attempts to synthesise the language used by participants in political debates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, i.e. mainly the nobility. Subsequent sections of the monograph are devoted to the most important and popular notions: ‘Commonwealth’, ‘law’, ‘freedom’, ‘political system’, ‘consent’, ‘virtue’, ‘love of homeland/patriotism’, ‘antiquity’, and ‘property’. The author conducts a semantic analysis of these terms and then uses it to analyse the ideas behind them. Setting her research both within the ancient tradition and the contemporary pan-European context, she emphasises the essence of the socio-political context of specific statements. The political language of the nobility evolved. And, although it was largely formed at the turn of the seventeenth century, depending on the purpose of the statement, individual concepts could have different meanings, fulfilling various discursive functions (means of persuasion, manipulation, description of the world and its values, integration, etc.). The author has shown that the political language of the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth established a coherent linguistic system for political debate, and contemporary researchers of the Polish-Lithuanian state should carefully analyse — also from a linguistic, and not only a substantive point of view — Old-Polish sources.

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