Współcześni czarnoksiężnicy – magia i rytuał w tekstach politycznych
CONTEMPORARY SORCERERS. MAGIO AND THE RITUAL IN POLITICAL TEXTS

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to present the peculiarity of the magical and ritual functions of journalistic-political texts. The analysis is based on articles from the Polish press from the 1950’s and 1990’s. The choice stems from the authors’ conviction that the role of journalism in the respective periods was different, depending on the political system: a closed, communist society of the 1950’s and an open society of the 1990’s.This intuition, however, has not been fully corroborated by the analysis of the linguistic material. For, as far as ‘mass communication’ is concerned, the analyzed texts feature a common factor of the same linguistic means of influencing the reader, often without the latter’s awareness.Thus, the magical and ritual functions of political texts are fundamentally different from analogical manifestations of social life in primitive societies. In the latter, magic fulfills an integrating function and is used in establishing and maintaining contact with the sacred. The methods used by journalists are therefore unethical: communication is instrumental in nature and verges on manipulation.

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