Möchten Sie über diese Zeitschrift informiert bleiben? Klicken Sie bitte auf die Buttons, um unsere Alerts zu abonnieren.
Möchten Sie über diese Zeitschrift informiert bleiben? Klicken Sie bitte auf die Buttons, um unsere Alerts zu abonnieren.
âAre we still masters of our own house?â
Disinformation discourse on the Ukrainian war migrants in Poland
in International Review of PragmaticsSearch for other papers by Piotr Cap in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
Disinformation discourse consists in the deliberate practice of disseminating false information with the intention to deceive. Originating from random fake news spread online by individuals, nowadays it comprises all kinds of content of public interest, importance or urgency, from healthcare to environment to war, communicated by organized groups and, often enough, populist political parties. Using sophisticated techniques of propaganda and threat generation, disinformation discourse is difficult to counter, as it draws upon the current construction of societies, their anxieties and fears, craftily exploiting cases of public distrust in officially circulated information. The aim of this paper is to show that threat-building and fear generation in disinformation discourse often involve the activation of general cognitive schemata that can trigger bipolar conceptualizations, typically the schemata of metaphorization and proximization. I argue that metaphoric as well as proximization based conceptualizations serve to enact virtual US vs. THEM distinctions and make credible and appealing the essentially artificial political differences, divisions and potential antagonisms. The paper investigates the power of such conceptualizations in the discourse of Confederation, a nationalist, radical-right political party in Poland, whose popularity has been on the rise in the past year. It demonstrates how metaphor and proximization are exploited in the disinformation discourse of Confederation aiming at the suspension of support for the war-torn state of Ukraine, on account of its âexcessive and eventually threateningâ social and (geo)political costs to Poland.
Kauf
Sofortzugang erwerben (PDF-Download und unbegrenzter Online-Zugang):
Institutszugang
Melden Sie sich mit Open Athens, Shibboleth oder Ihren institutionellen Anmeldedaten an.
Persönliche Anmeldung
Melden Sie sich mit Ihrem brill.com-Konto an
-
Arendt, Hannah. 1972. Crises of the Republic. Lying in politics, Civil Disobedience, on Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
-
Balirano, Giuseppe & Bronwen Hughes. 2024. The rainbow conspiracy: a corpus-based social media analysis of anti-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric in digital landscapes. In S. Maci, M. Demata, M. McGlashan & P. Seargeant (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation, 306â324. London: Routledge.
-
Ball, James. 2017. Post-truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World. London: Biteback Publishing.
-
BGK. 2025. WpÅyw migrantów z Ukrainy na polskÄ gospodarkÄ. https://www.bgk.pl/aktualnosc/bgk-wplyw-migrantow-z-ukrainy-na-polska-gospodarke-1/
-
Brüggemann, Michael & Simone Rödder (eds). 2020. Global Warming in Local Discourses: How Communities around the World Make Sense of Climate Change. Cambridge: Open Book.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2008. Towards the proximization model of the analysis of legitimization in political discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 40: 17â41.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2010. Axiological aspects of proximization. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 392â407.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2013. Proximization: The Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2017. The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2022. The Discourse of Conflict and Crisis: Polandâs Political Rhetoric in the European Perspective. London: Bloomsbury.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2019. âBritain is full to bursting point!â Immigration themes in the Brexit discourse of the UK Independence Party. In V. Koller, S. Kopf & M. Miglbauer (eds), Discourses of Brexit, 69â85. London: Routledge.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2023. Introduction. In P. Cap (ed.), Handbook of Political Discourse, 1â5. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
-
Cap, Piotr. 2025. Discourses of leadership in the 2015â2023 Poland: from conflict and crisis, to a âsmiling stateâ. Discourse & Society 36: 453â473.
-
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2005. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
-
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2013. Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
-
Chilton, Paul. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.
-
Chilton, Paul. 2010. From mind to grammar: coordinate systems, prepositions, constructions. In V. Evans & P. Chilton (eds), Language, Cognition and Space: The State of the Art and New Directions, 640â671, London: Equinox.
-
Chilton, Paul. 2023. Language and politics, politics and language: democracy and demagoguery. In P. Cap (ed.), Handbook of Political Discourse, 6â21. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
-
Clarke, Isobelle. 2024. The discourses of climate change denialism across conspiracy and pseudoscience websites. In S. Maci, M. Demata, M. McGlashan & P. Seargeant (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation, 325â341. London: Routledge.
-
DâAncona, Matthew. 2017. Post-truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. London: Ebury Press.
-
De Fina, Anna. 2023. Narratives and storytelling processes in the analysis of political discourse. In P. Cap (ed.), Handbook of Political Discourse, 204â218. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
-
Dunmire, Patricia. 2011. Projecting the Future through Political Discourse: The Case of the Bush Doctrine. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
-
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 1994. Figurative thought and figurative language. In M.A. Gernsbacher (ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 411â446. New York Academic Press.
-
Hart, Christopher. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
-
Hart, Christopher. 2014. Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.
-
Hart, Christopher. 2018. Cognitive linguistic Critical Discourse Studies. In J. Flowerdew & J. Richardson (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, 77â91, London: Routledge.
-
Henriksen, Frederik, Jakob Kristensen & Eva Mayerhöffer. 2024. Dissemination of RT and Sputnik content in European digital alternative news environments: mapping the influence of Russian state-backed media across platforms, topics, and ideology. The International Journal of Press/Politics 29: 795â818.
-
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Koller, Veronika, Susanne Kopf & Marlene Miglbauer (eds). 2019. Discourses of Brexit. London: Routledge.
-
Kosman, Marcin. 2024. Dyskurs Konfederacji WolnoÅÄ i NiepodlegÅoÅÄ. Warszawa: Grupa Wydawnicza FNCE.
-
Krzyżanowski, MichaÅ. 2020. Discursive shifts and the normalisation of racism: imaginaries of immigration, moral panics and the discourse of contemporary right-wing populism. Social Semiotics 30: 503â527.
-
Kuczabski, Aleksander, Orystlava Sydorchuk & Irena Svydruk. 2025. Humanitarian aspects of overcoming the social crisis caused by Russian military aggression in Ukraine. Security and Defence Quarterly 50: 36â49.
-
Lakoff, George. 1991. Metaphor and war: the metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. Peace Research 23: 25â32.
-
Lakoff, George & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Lazer, David, Matthew Baum, Yochai Benkler, Adam Berinsky, Kelly Greenhill, Filippo Menczer, Miriam Metzger, Brendan Nyhan, Gordon Pennycook, David Rothschild, Michael Schudson, Steven Sloman, Cass Sunstein, Emily Thorson, Duncan Watts & Jonathan Zittrain. 2018. The science of fake news. Science 359: 1094â1096.
-
Li, Ke & Xiaonan Gong. 2022. Proximization: a critical cognitive analysis of health security discourse. Text & Talk 42: 30â45.
-
Li, Weina. 2024. Proximization: its development, application and limitation. The International Journal of English Language, Education, and Literature Studies 6: 25â34.
-
LipiÅska, Maria & Dariusz Jemielniak. 2025. The good, the bad, and the ugly: anti-Ukrainian narratives on Polish Twitter. Journal of Language and Politics. doi: 10.1075/jlp.24124.lip
-
Liu, Haoshuang & Xiongyong Cheng. 2023. A proximization study of environmental discourse under Proximization Theory. Education, Science, Technology, Innovation and Life 6. doi: 10.23977/langl.2023.060310
-
Maci, Stefania, Massimiliano Demata, Mark McGlashan & Philip Seargeant (eds). 2024. The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation. London: Routledge.
-
Motyka, Grzegorz. 2018. NieustajÄ cy polsko-ukraiÅski spór o historiÄ. Sprawy MiÄdzynarodowe 71: 31â40.
-
Musolff, Andreas. 2016. Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.
-
Musolff, Andreas, Ruth Breeze, Kayo Kondo & Sara Vilar-Lluch (eds). 2022. Pandemic and Crisis Discourse: Communicating COVID-19 and Public Health Strategy. London: Bloomsbury.
-
Musolff, Andreas. 2023. Metaphorical framing in political discourse. In P. Cap (ed.) Handbook of Political Discourse, 145â163. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
-
Norris, Pippa & Ronald Inglehart. 2018. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Oddo, John. 2018. The Discourse of Propaganda. Pittsburgh: Penn State UP.
-
Padley, Roxanne. 2024. Exploring health-related misinformation, disinformation and âfake newsâ. In S. Maci, M. Demata, M. McGlashan & P. Seargeant (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation, 359â369. London: Routledge.
-
Ptak, Alicja. 2025. Ukrainian immigrants have âpositive impact on Polandâs GDP and budgetâ, finds report. Notes from Poland. https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/03/15/ukrainian-immigrants-have-positive-impact-on-polands-gdp-and-budget-finds-report/
-
Rankin, Jennifer. 2024. Donald Tuskâs Polish revival masks deeper divisions with German neighbours. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/donald-tusk-polish-revival-masks-deeper-divisions-with-german-neighbours
-
Tandoc, Edson, Zheng Lim & Richard Ling. 2018. Defining âfake newsâ: a typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism 6: 137â153.
-
Taylor, Charlotte. 2021. Metaphors of migration over time. Discourse & Society 32: 463â481.
-
Veritasia, Mytha, Amalia Muthmainnah & Mathias de Lima Santos. 2024. Gendered disinformation: a pernicious threat to equality in the Asia Pacific. Media Asia 52: 653â661.
-
Yang, Aimei & Dmitri Williams. 2024. Quantifying networked influence: how much do disinformation spreadersâ networks drive their public engagement outcomes? Social Media + Society 10. doi: 10.1177/20563051241265865.
-
Wojczal, Krzysztof. 2025. #This is our war! Krzysztof Wojczal Blog Autorski. https://www.krzysztofwojczal.pl/geopolityka/this-is-our-war/
-
Zimdars, Melissa & Kembrew McLeod (eds). 2020. Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
| Insgesamt | Letzte 365 Tage | In den letzten 30 Tagen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aufrufe von Kurzbeschreibungen | 385 | 385 | 17 |
| Gesamttextansichten | 11 | 11 | 2 |
| PDF-Downloads | 28 | 28 | 1 |
âAre we still masters of our own house?â
Disinformation discourse on the Ukrainian war migrants in Poland
in International Review of PragmaticsSearch for other papers by Piotr Cap in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Disinformation discourse consists in the deliberate practice of disseminating false information with the intention to deceive. Originating from random fake news spread online by individuals, nowadays it comprises all kinds of content of public interest, importance or urgency, from healthcare to environment to war, communicated by organized groups and, often enough, populist political parties. Using sophisticated techniques of propaganda and threat generation, disinformation discourse is difficult to counter, as it draws upon the current construction of societies, their anxieties and fears, craftily exploiting cases of public distrust in officially circulated information. The aim of this paper is to show that threat-building and fear generation in disinformation discourse often involve the activation of general cognitive schemata that can trigger bipolar conceptualizations, typically the schemata of metaphorization and proximization. I argue that metaphoric as well as proximization based conceptualizations serve to enact virtual US vs. THEM distinctions and make credible and appealing the essentially artificial political differences, divisions and potential antagonisms. The paper investigates the power of such conceptualizations in the discourse of Confederation, a nationalist, radical-right political party in Poland, whose popularity has been on the rise in the past year. It demonstrates how metaphor and proximization are exploited in the disinformation discourse of Confederation aiming at the suspension of support for the war-torn state of Ukraine, on account of its âexcessive and eventually threateningâ social and (geo)political costs to Poland.
| Insgesamt | Letzte 365 Tage | In den letzten 30 Tagen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aufrufe von Kurzbeschreibungen | 385 | 385 | 17 |
| Gesamttextansichten | 11 | 11 | 2 |
| PDF-Downloads | 28 | 28 | 1 |
