Communist-era 'newspeak' most appealing to conservative party supporters

At least that’s according to research undertaken by psychologists from the University of Warsaw.

Professor Michal Glowinski told the daily Gazeta Wyborcza that much of the public language of the PRL (“People’s Poland”) – what he calls 'news speak,' after George Orwell’s book 1984 - can be discerned in many of PiS's public pronouncements.

The researchers, Tomasz Baran and Laura Polkowska, tested Glowinski’s hypothesis with research into correlations between political party sympathy and predispositions to certain styles of public speech.

Their findings, Baran said, supported Glowinski's assertion that PiS and Samobrona supporters were better disposed to 'news speak' than other voters.

In communist regimes 'news speak' could be characterised by a certain ritualised way of constructing political discourse, not only in terms of content, syntax, referential context, but also in terms of body language, style of presentation, tone of voice and other things.

The researchers prepared two texts and then conducted a questionnaire to see how each was received by supporters of different political parties.

Both texts were about inducing a car driver to buckle up. One was styled in news speak-style language and the other wasn’t.

Baran said the former text was constructed in a very black and white form, with the divide between ‘good’ US and ‘bad’ THEM very clearly delineated.

The news speak text was dominated, he says, by arbitrary expressions that evoked unambiguous meaning, while the other was less didactic and provided more space for the recipient to judge and decide for themself.

PiS is often accused of a rather divisive style of political discourse, evoking a certain kind of 'Poland' and a certain version of the nation's history, one that tends to be dominated by dichotomies between 'us' and 'them,' in various aspects of public life.(jh)