Słowa klucze polskiego dyskursu publicznego. Słowa dnia i słowa roku
Keywords of the Polish Public Discourse. Words of the Day and Words of the Year

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the notion of a keyword. Keywords of the public discourse arechosen on the basis of questionnaires, plebiscites or on the basis of usage frequency innewspapers. Both methods have been applied in the project of the University of Warsaw.Words of the day are statistically the most popular words appearing in daily newspapers.The words of the year are chosen by a jury of linguists from among proposals submitted byparticipants of the internet plebiscite announced on university websites. The article presentsPolish words of the years from 2011, with the word of the year 2015 uchodźca ‘refugee’(words with the same meaning have been chosen in many countries). The main question posed in this paper is whether ‘word of the year’ polls can shedlight on the permanently valid keywords of national culture (as they are defined by AnnaWierzbicka, Jerzy Bartmiński or Walery Pisarek), or instead reflect one-off occurrences inthe short-term story of current social events.

• Details
• Contents