‘We don’t want any immigrants or terrorists here’: The linguistic manufacturing of xenophobia in the post-2015 Poland

Abstract

This article explores the discursive patterns of legitimization of anti-immigration policies adopted by the Polish right-wing government which has been ruling the country since October 2015. It argues that legitimization of anti-immigration policies is essentially threat-based and coercive, involving a specific selection of rhetorical tools deployed to characterize different immigrant groups and individual immigrants from mainly Middle East and East African territories. Construed as ‘different’, ‘alien’ and ‘unbelonging’, in a whole lot of cultural, ideological and religious terms, they are claimed to pose an emerging threat to the safety of Poland and the personal safety and well-being of Polish citizens. The article draws on discourse space models and Proximization Theory in particular, revealing how the concepts of closeness and remoteness are manipulated in the service of threat construction and the sanctioning of tough anti-immigration measures, such as the refusal to accept non-Christian refugees from war territories in Syria. It demonstrates how Poland’s government manufactures and discursively perpetuates the aura of fear by conflating the issue of refugee migration into Europe with the problem of global terrorism, and how virtual threats to Polish cultural legacy and values are conceived to justify the government’s opposition to the idea of the multiethnic and multicultural state in general.

Keywords

Anti-immigration discourse Law and Justice party legitimization Poland proximization threat construction xenophobia

Introduction

October 2015 saw a major political change in Poland, marked by a landslide victory in parliamentary elections of the strongly conservative Law and Justice (L&J) party, which took over the legislative and executive powers after the 8-year-long rule of liberal government. The resulting policy changes have been enormous, including a dramatic growth of economic interventionism and central planning, serious constraints on the constitutional freedom and independence of the judicial sector, as well as state control over the public media, among many others. No less radical have been the changes in foreign policy, reflecting the essentially anti-European disposition of the new government, whose nationalistic stance has been provoking continual tensions between Warsaw and Brussels (such as the 2016 vote over the renewal of Donald Tusk’s presidency of the Council of Europe).

Alongside these changes, L&J’s government has been redefining Poland’s position with respect to the most critical issues surrounding Europe and the European Union (EU), such as the Eurozone crisis, Brexit and, of course, the ever-growing problem of refugee migration into Europe. Regarding the latter, L&J and the new government have refused to implement the refugee distribution arrangement agreed on by the former cabinet, arguing that it realizes a ‘German plan’ at the cost of Poland’s national interests. As of today, L&J’s government not only challenges that arrangement, but also openly refuses to participate in virtually all EU initiatives to manage the immigration crisis. While this kind of policy finds little understanding with most European partners, it enjoys relatively high popularity on the home front, among Polish people. This is due to a skillful rhetorical campaign, which not only legitimizes that policy, but also, and consequently, plays a key role in legitimizing the new government as a whole.

This article is a critical, predominantly qualitative study of the Polish government’s discursive management of the refugee and immigration crisis, pinpointing the main strategies whereby L&J and their cabinet justify not only Poland’s lack of political involvement, but in fact their essentially negative attitude to the issue of immigration and even immigrants as such. The analysis demonstrates that migration of refugee groups into Europe – mainly from Syria, but also other countries of the Middle East as well as East Africa – is consistently conceptualized as a growing threat to Poland’s national security. The threat is construed in ideological as well as physical terms, involving a strategic interplay of abstract and material fear appeals. The construal of the threat rests on forced conceptualizations of a destructive impact of the apparently distant entities (immigrant groups from external territories – a symbolic ‘them’) on the home entities (Poland and other European countries – a symbolic ‘us’). The ominous vision of such an impact serves as a prerequisite for legitimization of the anti-immigrant stance on both the European arena and anti-immigrant policies at home.

The article is structured in three main parts. The first section discusses the main theories – cognitive-linguistic, evolutionary, psychological – of threat construction and threat communication in political discourse and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). I start from general issues of dichotomous (us vs them) representations in political discourse and go on to focus on how the external (them) parties are discursively constructed as threat elements endangering the central, or home (us), entities. In this vein, I present Proximization Theory (PT; Cap, 2013, etc.) as arguably the most viable model to capture the us vs them opposition and conflict. In the second section I apply the proximization framework to analyze fragments of 2015–2017 speeches by top politicians of the Polish ruling government and the L&J party. The data include public addresses and comments made by Jarosław Kaczyński (the L&J party leader), Beata Szydło (the 2015–2017 Prime Minister¹ in the L&J government), Witold Waszczykowski (the Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Mariusz Błaszczak (the Minister of the Interior). In the final section I synthetically summarize findings from the analysis. It is argued that the threat construction pattern pursued in the speeches draws upon a unique combination of ideological and material elements, whereby the initially abstract threat turns gradually into a tangible, physical danger. It seems from the analysis that a deeper theoretical account of this regularity may reveal not only empirical but also methodological benefits, adding to the explanatory potential of PT and CDA as a whole.²

Discourse space: Cognitive representations and the forcing of worldviews

Issues of threat construction based on discursive representation of conflict between the home group (us) and the antagonistic or enemy group (them) have been among the most popular themes of CDA since at least Van Dijk’s (1998) classic book – until today, when publications on mental models and polarized ideological discourse appear regularly (see e.g. Van Dijk, 2017, for an overview). This seems to be a direct consequence of CDA’s growing interest in mechanisms of spatial cognition and conceptualization, underlying numerous interdisciplinary studies of ideologically motivated construals of meaning within different discourse domains (Cienki et al., 2010; Dunmire, 2011; Filardo-Llamas, 2010, 2013; Filardo-Llamas et al., 2015; Hart, 2010, 2014; Kaal, 2012, etc.). The cognitive-linguistic approach to CDA offers a disciplined theoretical perspective on the conceptual import of linguistic choices identified as potentially ideological. It thus affords a new and promising lens on persuasive, manipulative and coercive properties of discourse, worldview and conceptualization which have hitherto been beyond the radar of CDA (Hart, 2014; Hart and Cap, 2014).

Crucially, the cognitive-linguistic approach in CDA presupposes the fundamental role of spatial cognition in relativization and subjective representation of processes/attitudes that involve a deictic point of view to ‘anchor’ ideas (Gavins, 2007; Filardo-Llamas et al., 2015; Kaal, 2012; Werth, 1999).³ All language use, and therefore also discourse, involves the (re-)construction of a mental space which functions as a conceptual frame for the representation of geographically, culturally and ideologically bounded social realities. These assumptions are operationalized in CDA in models which link thought patterns in the mind to their linguistic and discursive representations, revealing ideological meanings. Such models fall roughly into two groups. On the one hand, there are (cf. the following sub-section) theories that account for the us/them relation in the basic, ‘center-periphery’ arrangement of the Discourse Space (DS; Chilton, 2004, 2005; Gavins, 2007; Levinson, 2003). These theories can be regarded as ‘formative’ in the development of the cognitive approach to CDA.⁴ On the other hand, there are (cf. the Proximization Theory sub-section) more recent models such as Cap (2013) and Hart (2014), whose focus is not just the basic, or initial, DS arrangement, but crucially, the dynamic re-arrangement of the Space, involving a discursively construed movement of the them peripheral entity toward the us-center entity. As is claimed in the following, the latter seems to be better equipped to capture the threatening nature of such a movement.

Discourse/Deictic Space Theory

Among the ‘formative’ cognitive-linguistic approaches to CDA, the Discourse/Deictic Space Theory (DST) of Paul Chilton (2004, 2005, 2010, 2014)⁵ is arguably the most elaborate model, paving the way for later developments. In Chilton (2004: 57), a central claim is made that in processing any discourse, people ‘position’ other entities in their ‘world’ by ‘positioning’ these entities in relation to themselves along three conceptual axes in three dimensions: ‘spatial’, ‘temporal’ and ‘modal’. This arrangement presupposes the primacy of the spatial dimension as the remaining dimensions involve conceptualizations in spatial terms. Specifically, time is conceptualized in terms of motion through space (‘the time to act has arrived’) and modality is conceptualized in terms of distance (‘remotely possible’) or (deontic modality) as a metaphoric extension of the binary opposition between the close of the remote. The origin of the three dimensions is at the deictic center, which includes the symbolic Self, namely I, we and so on. All other entities and processes exist relative to ontological spaces defined by their coordinates on the space (s), time (t) and modality (m) axes (for a graphic example of the representation, see Chilton, 2004: 58).

Chilton’s (2004) DST embodies the basic interface of cognition and language shared by most of the cognitive models trying to account for the construal of discourse. At the heart of the account is the concept of deixis and, what follows, deictic markers. The spatial markers, such as I/we and they, ‘located’ on the s axis are the core of the linguistic representation, which is a representation in terms of binary oppositions extending into all three dimensions. Typically, entities and processes construed as ‘close’ in the spatiotemporal dimension are assigned positive values within the deontic modal dimension, while those construed as ‘distant’ are at the same time (or as a result) assigned negative values. In models other than Chilton’s, the central status of the spatial deixis is reflected at theoretical and terminological levels, where ‘us-good/them-bad’ is more of a conceptual than linguistic dichotomy (cf. Text World Theory in Werth, 1999 and Gavins, 2007).

Over the years, Chilton has applied his DST model in a number of critical studies of political discourse, many of which involved issues of threat construction and fear generation (Chilton, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2014). As I have argued before (Cap, 2013, 2014, 2015), the value of these studies and the theory, for CDA and beyond, is great and undeniable. Altogether, Chilton’s DST offers some excellent insights into the representation of entities in political DS. First, it recognizes the fundamental role of distance from the ‘Self’ entities (in the deictic center) in conceptualizing other entities and events in political/public discourse. Obvious as this may seem, it is a vital prerequisite for any further inquiry in linguistic ways of construing distant objects and happenings as close to the deictic center. Second, it acknowledges that the distance is relative and that it is symbolically represented through discourse. This in turn makes possible further explorations into how the symbolic representations can be evoked strategically, for pragmatic effects and, crucially, threat construction. Third, DST shows that ‘distance’ involves a number of mutually interactive dimensions, which make mental representations of entities and events arise from a combined activation of different cognitive domains such as spatial, temporal and modal.

Still, there are some clearly unattended issues. Just like other ‘formative’ cognitive-linguistic models of discourse, DST can be considered a theory of general, initial, ‘fixed’ organization of entities in political DS. Its aim is to show how people’s mental representations are generally positioned with respect to three cognitive dimensions. It is clearly not to show how people are made to establish representations that would suit the accomplishment of specific discourse goals pursued by political speakers. The reason is that DST does not offer a systematic account of quantifiable lexico-grammatical items responsible for locating entities and events at different distances from the deictic center marking the intensity of pragmatic powers of these entities/events. While it recognizes ideological, legitimizing, coercive discourse roles of certain words and expressions, it arbitrarily assigns them a static position on one of the three axes, in fixed distance to/from the deictic center. This can be seen in all studies in which Chilton applies DST to provide a critical analysis of (political) discourse. For example, in his study of discourse of the Kosovo war, Chilton (2004: 142) provides a complex three-dimensional representation which includes a number of heterogeneous us and them geopolitical entities (‘Asia’, ‘Middle East countries’, ‘Kosovo’, ‘Bosnia’, ‘Sarajevo’, ‘our allies’, ‘Europe’, etc.) located on the Space axis. While the abstraction of these entities from discourse raises no doubt, and their positioning looks perfectly accurate, the analysis stops there – there is no attempt to account for conceptual shifts that are forced discursively to construe the movement of the them entities from the DS periphery to the center. This is because DST, as a discourse-analytic model, has not really developed a systematic way to determine which linguistic choices, in what numbers, and within which dimension, are the most effective in forcing a worldview conceptualization upon the addressee. As I have argued in more detail elsewhere (Cap, 2013, 2014, 2015, in press), DST’s representation of DS can be described as quite conventional; it indexes entities and events by primarily nominal phrases and pronouns. At the same time, the role of verbal forms, a core element in the conceptual shifts between the remote them and the us central camp, is clearly underappreciated. This is a huge disadvantage when it comes to analysis of the threat element emerging from these shifts.

Proximization Theory

Notwithstanding the above problems, Paul Chilton’s (2004, 2005) DST can be considered the most important reference model for several later works (Cap, 2008, 2010, 2013; Hart, 2010, 2014) trying to revise and redefine the original account of DS conceptual operations in strictly linguistic (lexical and grammatical) terms. Most of these works employ the concept of proximization to determine specific linguistic items construing conceptual shifts in the service of forcing worldviews.

In its broadest sense, proximization is a discursive strategy of presenting physically and temporally distant entities, events and states of affairs (including ‘distant’, i.e. adversarial ideologies) – a symbolic them – as increasingly and negatively consequential to the speaker and her addressee (us). Projecting the them entities as gradually encroaching upon the us territory (both physical and ideological), the speaker seeks legitimization of actions and/or policies which she proposes to neutralize the growing impact of the negative, ‘foreign’, ‘alien’, ‘antagonistic’, entities (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Proximization in Discourse Space (DS).

The term ‘proximization’ was first proposed by Cap to analyze coercion patterns in the US anti-terrorist rhetoric following 9/11 (Cap, 2006, 2008, 2010). Since then it has been used within different discourse domains, though most commonly in studies of state political discourses: crisis construction and war rhetoric (Chovanec, 2010), anti-migration discourse (Hart, 2010), political party representation (Cienki et al., 2010), construction of national memory (Filardo-Llamas, 2010) and design of foreign policy documents (Dunmire, 2011). Findings from these studies have been integrated in PT proposed in Cap (2013). PT follows the original concept of proximization, which is defined as a forced construal operation meant to evoke closeness of the external threat, to solicit legitimization of preventive means. The threat comes from DS-peripheral entities, them, which are conceptualized to be crossing the Space to invade the us entities, the speaker and her addressee. The threat possesses a spatiotemporal as well as ideological nature, which breaks the proximization model down into three parts. ‘Spatial proximization’ is a forced construal of them entities encroaching physically upon us entities (speaker, addressee). Analogously to DST, the spatial aspect of proximization is primary as the remaining aspects/strategies involve conceptualizations in spatial terms. ‘Temporal proximization’ is a construal of the envisaged conflict as not only imminent, but also momentous, historic and thus needing an immediate response and unique preventive measures. Spatial and temporal proximization involve fear appeals and typically use various kinds of analogies (including metaphors) to conflate the growing threat with an actual disastrous event in the past, to endorse the current scenario. Finally, ‘axiological proximization’ involves construal of a gathering ideological clash between the ‘home values’ of the DS central entities (us) and the alien and antagonistic them values. As will be shown, the them values are not merely abstract entities; they possess a crucial potential to eventually materialize within the us territory.

Although following up on DST in many of its conceptual underpinnings, PT makes a distinctively new contribution at two levels, cognitive-pragmatic and linguistic, or more precisely, lexico-grammatical. At the cognitive-pragmatic conceptual level, PT revisits the ontological status and pragmatic function of deixis and deictic markers. Traditionally, deixis has been viewed as a merely technical necessity for the possible interpretability of all communication (Levelt, 1989; Levinson, 1983). Within the proximization approach, deixis goes beyond this ‘primary’ status and becomes, eventually, an instrument for legitimization, persuasion and social coercion. The concept of deixis is not reduced to a finite set of ‘deictic expressions’, but rather expanded to cover bigger lexico-grammatical phrases and discourse expressions. As a result, all proximization operations, spatial, temporal and axiological, their intensity and their changes, can be described linguistically in terms of the interplay of various lexico-grammatical items drawn from these three domains. To abstract the items, PT uses three distinct frameworks – spatial, temporal and axiological – which classify the items in conceptual categories reflecting the us–them arrangement of the DS (cf. Table 1 depicting the spatial framework). This allows a quantitative analysis yielding the intensity of a specific kind of proximization (and thus the intensity with which a worldview is forced) in a specific discourse timeframe.

Table 1.

Spatial proximization framework in the proximization model (abridged – cf. Cap, 2013, for a full version).

Category	Lexico-grammatical items and phrases
1. Elements of the deictic center of the DS (us)	Noun phrases (NPs) marking us
2. Elements on the periphery of the DS (them)	Noun phrases (NPs) marking them
3. Conceptualizers of movement of them toward us	Verb phrases (VPs) of motion and directionality (head, come, move, arrive, get close …)
4. Conceptualizers of the anticipated impact of them on us	Abstract nouns and noun phrases (NPs; threat, danger …)
5. Conceptualizers of the actual impact of them on us	Verb phrases (VPs) of action (hit, flood, destroy …)
6. Conceptualizers of the anticipated effects of the them impact on us	Abstract nouns and noun phrases (NPs; catastrophe, tragedy …)

DS: Discourse Space.

The general function of the three frameworks of proximization – spatial, temporal and axiological – is to provide a linguistic representation of both the initial arrangement of the DS and its dynamic re-arrangement, following the impact of the them peripheral entities on the us central entities. Thus, for example, the spatial framework earlier is supposed to capture not only the default architecture of the DS (categories 1, 2), but also (and crucially) the shift leading to the them vs us clash (categories 3, 5) and the (anticipated) effects of the clash (categories 4, 6). The third category, central to the entire design of the framework, sets the ‘traditional’ deictic expressions such as nouns and pronouns to work pragmatically together with the other elements of the superordinate verb phrase (VP). As a result the VP acquires a deictic status, in the sense that on top of conventionally denoting the default DS entities (marked by (pro-)nominals), it also indexes their movement, which establishes the target perspective construed by the speaker. As a result, one can account for discursive sequences which represent both the them entity in its initial static position and later its growing encroachment on the us camp. For example, Cap (2013: 86) analyzes G.W. Bush’s (2003) warnings about the global terrorist danger in the aftermath of 9/11, such as ‘Al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks have set their course to confront us and our civilization’ (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-and-releases/02142003). The analysis shows that the nominal deixis ‘Al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks’ combines with the following verb phrase to form a complex deictic structure marking both the antagonistic entity and its movement toward home entities in the deictic center.

The part of the proximization model that is the most relevant to today’s anti-immigration discourse in Poland is PT’s handle on ideological rhetoric. Specifically, PT contains the ‘axiological proximization framework’ (Cap, 2013), whose task is to account for ideological discourse choices and, crucially, the relation between the lexical items marking abstract entities versus those marking physical entities (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Axiological proximization framework in the proximization model (Cap, 2013).

Category	Lexico-grammatical items and phrases
1. Values of elements of the DS deictic center (us)	Noun phrases (NPs) marking us values
2. Values of elements on the DS periphery (them)	Noun phrases (NPs) marking them values
3. Linear logico-rhetorical patterns construing materialization of the antagonistic ideology of them in the form of them’s physical impact on us: (a) remote possibility scenario followed by (b) actual occurrence scenario	Discourse sequences comprising: VP1 containing category 2 NP followed by VP2 containing an NP marking them’s impact on us

DS: Discourse Space.

As can be seen, axiological proximization is related to spatial proximization in its recognition of the bipolar us vs them arrangement of the DS, as well as potential impact of them entities on us entities. The difference is, of course, the nature of the impact – while spatial proximization construes an essentially physical invasion, axiological proximization forces a conceptualization that involves, at least initially, a ‘merely’ ideological encroachment. This is because the us/them agents are defined, in contrast to the spatial framework, as not physical entities but the associated values, norms and ideological postures. Naturally, a lasting conflict of values may lead to a material clash, thereby fitting into the analytic categories 4, 5, 6 of the spatial framework.

The key part of the axiological framework is thus its third category, which accounts for a conceptual transition. It describes, in lexical as well as grammatical terms, a subtle transformation of the nature of threat posed on us entities by them entities. Initially remote and abstract in its conceptual appeal, the threat is gradually construed as imminent and, most crucially, material. This change is captured, at the linguistic level, in a specific sequence of verbal and nominal elements included in the category. That way, the third category of the axiological framework can successfully isolate and account for, both qualitatively and quantitatively, some of the most important language items and formulas which make up the L&J anti-immigration discourse.⁶

Threat construction in the L&J discourse: From ‘immigrants’ to ‘terrorists’

The corpus for analysis

The data for this study come from a corpus of 124 addresses, statements and comments by the most prominent L&J politicians: Jarosław Kaczyński (the L&J leader), Beata Szydło (the 2015–2017 Prime Minister in the L&J government), Witold Waszczykowski (the Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Mariusz Błaszczak (the Minister of the Interior). Their time frame is the 17-month period between 1 November 2015 (a week after the L&J electoral victory) and 31 March 2017. The speeches have been made at various public appearances of the politicians, such as parliamentary sessions, press conferences, media debates and interviews. Importantly, I have included only the addresses/statements/comments devoted solely to the issue of immigration and not dealing with any other issues at the same time. This has been done to make sure that all discourse items present in these speeches can be analyzed as integral elements of the (anti-)immigration narrative. The focus of analysis has been consistent with the idea and design of the PT model and in particular its axiological framework. Accordingly, my first goal was to account for elements of the us central camp, then elements of the them-remote camp, and finally (and most importantly) the threat construction patterns involving a symbolic invasion of entities of the latter camp on the former.

The us

A substantial part of L&J’s anti-immigration discourse includes the description of us – Poland, Polish people and the current Polish government – in deeply conservative, ideological-religious terms. References to traditional Polish values are plentiful, and they are construed as warrants of personal and economic well-being as well as personal and national security. The discursive segments carrying such construals, seemingly unrelated in places to the main immigration theme, are vital for conceptual consolidation of the us camp and instilling a sense of social belonging and solidarity in the face of an outside threat. In addition, they reinforce trust and credibility of the rhetoric and its authors, by addressing commonly accepted, uncontroversial issues:

(1) The safety of Polish families is this government’s priority. Polish people deserve it. They deserve equal rights and social justice . They deserve to feel masters of their own house. They deserve to feel secure . They deserve peace , stability and economic progress . This is the true meaning of freedom and independence . We derive it from our Christian heritage , the values to which our nation has been committed for centuries and to which we are committed today. We stand firm by these values and our national sovereignty . We do not take foreign orders. (Jarosław Kaczyński, 9 May 2016)⁷

(2) We refuse to sacrifice our freedom and security for political correctness. From the very beginning we have said that this issue [of immigration] should be resolved by assisting refugees outside the EU. We are staunchly against the European Commission proposal, which would force EU member states to pay millions of euros⁸ per refused refugee. Such a decision would abolish the sovereignty of EU member states . We do not agree to that, we have to oppose that, because we are and we will be in charge in our own country. (Witold Waszczykowski, 12 June 2016)

(3) As Christians , we are raised to be tolerant and respectful of other cultures. But we ask the same kind of respect from others. It is our right to decide whom we welcome to our own house. Because there are cultures, there are values, which simply cannot coexist. (Beata Szydło, 5 September 2016)

(4) We must reject the cheap slogans of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘enrichment’. We must reject political correctness and call things by their true names. Rather than shedding tears like [Federica] Mogherini or organizing marches that solve nothing, authorities should ensure the safety of citizens. Here in Poland, our predecessors⁹ were on track to commit the same mistakes as other Western countries. But the new government sets the priorities right. Our main responsibility is to uphold the freedom and security of our people. This has been our election promise and we will keep it. (Mariusz Błaszczak, 20 July 2016)^10,11

The dominance of us markers in examples (1)–(4) is quite conspicuous. Virtually, the only them markers are those which conceptualize immigration from outside the EU as a phenomenon or a broader issue (‘multiculturalism’, ‘enrichment’), rather than referring to any persons or groups. This is because the main aim of the claims in examples (1)–(4) is to consolidate the us camp in the common commitment of its members to some universally shared values – such as ‘freedom’, ‘peace’ and ‘security’ – which stem from a common cultural and religious background. Such a consolidation is a natural prerequisite to reject alternative sociopolitical visions and projections, including the conception of multiculturalism and multicultural integration and, eventually, the admission of non-EU immigrants into Poland. At the heart of L&J’s rhetoric lies a strong appeal to the sense of ‘independence’, which serves to invoke core elements of the national heritage in order to define and legitimize the current and future responsibilities. As suggested in Kaczyński’s argument in example (1), Poland’s ‘national sovereignty’ is and has always been dependent on the commitment of its people, whose dedication now calls for further active involvement and, possibly, sacrifice. While apparently posing an obligation, such an argument also fosters the spirit of exceptionalism, sanctioning claims of national uniqueness and the particular rights that go with it (‘They deserve …’). Overall, Kaczyński’s argument, as well as claims in the other examples, reflect the rhetorical principle of consistency in belief. The consistency principle (Festinger, 1957, etc.; Jowett and O’Donnell, 1992) says that the best credibility and thus legitimization effects can be expected if the speaker produces her message in line with the psychological, social, political, cultural, predispositions of the addressee (Jowett and O’Donnell, 1992). However, since a full compliance is hardly ever possible, it is essential that the novel message is at least tentatively or partly acceptable – then, its acceptability and the speaker’s credibility are going to increase over time. In L&J’s rhetoric, the consistency principle lies implicit in the calls to, on the one hand, remain loyal to Poland’s legacy and thus actively partake in protecting the ‘own house’, and on the other, accept state policies which are meant to protect it institutionally. Both obligations are shown to follow directly from the ideals, values and norms which have been found largely unquestionable throughout the Polish history, especially the commitment to national independence and sovereignty.

As can be seen from examples (1) and (3), L&J’s discourse benefits a lot, at lexical level, from non-literal construals of the concept of house, especially the state is house conceptual metaphor. The most direct benefits are of course the ability to assign the ‘inhabitants’ of the house – that is, the nation, family values (Musolff, 2016) – and thus discursively strengthen the bond of solidarity and common belonging. But there are also less direct yet equally important conceptual advantages. In addition to connoting positive values and triggering positive, bond-tightening emotions, house is readily conceptualizable in terms of a ‘container’, and even more particularly as a ‘rupturable container’ (Hart, 2010, 2014). This means that the construal of state in terms of a house also involves a presupposition of damage, or destruction, from an external impact. The existence of such a presupposition is indeed crucial to the conceptual setup of the us camp, as it helps instill the aura of threat from a possible invasion of the them camp in the discursive process of proximization. Thus, even though the L&J rhetoric in examples (1)–(4) is mainly focused on the us group and mobilization of that group to accept the L&J leadership and the communicated policies, it simultaneously contains important technical elements, conceptual and linguistic, for the buildup of the threatening proximization scenario.

Finally, from the perspective of Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1988), the discourse in examples (1)–(4) can be considered a macrostructural thesis in a thesis-antithesis macro-discursive sequence, aiming to pave the way for the negative interpretation of the ‘antithesis’ based on the enhanced appreciation of the preceding ‘thesis’ (Mann and Thompson, 1988: 11). In less technical words, the more accomplished by the speaker with regard to acceptance of her messages as well as visions of the functioning of the us group, the more probable, later, an automatic rejection of any alternative visions. In this vein, by reinforcing the common principles and values, and recalling even those elements of life which have come to be taken for granted (as in ‘[Polish people] deserve peace, stability and economic progress’), the speakers in examples (1)–(4) seek to arrange for the later visions and scenarios to get immediately abhorred.

The them

In L&J’s anti-immigration discourse, them is construed as culturally, socio-politically and ideologically alien and potentially antagonistic to the us party. Specifically, immigrants are construed to possess sociocultural, religious and even biological characteristics which preclude their inclusion in Poland and Europe as a whole, thus generating frustration and anger. Many of these characteristics stand in sharp contrast to conservative values of the us camp, particularly the traditional family values as discussed in examples (1)–(4). Importantly, the incompatibility of the them values is endorsed discursively in analogies to previous events and previous or current states of affairs in Europe, which are construed as costly lessons (though the word ‘lesson’ is never used explicitly, at least in the corpus). The events recalled in these lessons serve to exhibit the link between mass immigration, especially Muslim, and terrorist or other criminal acts:

(5) We say no to those young healthy men who selfishly leave behind their wives and children to improve their own lives. We say no to those who choose to escape rather than fight for their country. (Beata Szydło, 14 January 2016)

(6) We are not going to have the problems that Brussels or Stockholm have. We are not going to have districts where sharia law or any law other than Polish law reigns. Where there are no-go zones for police. And where every few weeks something explodes. (Mariusz Błaszczak, 2 March 2017)

(7) Can someone tell me why, after 1,000 women were assaulted in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, Mrs. Merkel is still supporting the Muslim immigration in Germany? Didn’t they have enough to see that Muslims do not integrate because they don’t want to? (Witold Waszczykowski, 23 April 2016)

(8) Have we forgotten that, in the past, migrants brought diseases like cholera and dysentery to Europe, as well as all sorts of parasites and protozoa, which while not dangerous in the organisms of these people, could be dangerous here. (Jarosław Kaczyński, 19 December 2015)

In contrast to the previous set, examples (5)–(8) reveal a dominant proportion of them-related phrases. The specific values in these phrases are not communicated directly; they must be inferred from larger units involving nominals, and notably, extended modifiers (such as relative clauses). Thus, the most salient values associated with them include selfishness (‘who selfishly leave behind …’), cowardice (‘who choose to escape …’), chaos and lawlessness (‘no-go zones’) and, ultimately, terror and fear (‘where every few weeks something explodes’).¹²

While the four voices above may differ in their radicalism, as well as plain rationality, they all contribute to a simple and consistent picture of immigrants and their postures. As has been mentioned, immigrants are construed as unpatriotic, greedy and guided by their individual economic interest. The areas they colonize quickly turn into lawless ghettos breeding crime and terror, as in ‘Brussels or Stockholm’ (example 6). They refuse to integrate, sometimes for ideological and cultural reasons, and sometimes out of sheer calculation. It is even their different physical, or rather biological, constitution that poses a threat, as Kaczyński’s (in)famous words in example (8) suggest.

Construed in these terms, immigrants make up a compact out-group, whose physical characteristics and ideological predispositions contribute some excellent conceptual premises for the construction of threat in the mechanism of proximization. There is first of all a massive and potentially growing them entity, whose outlines are unclear and movement unpredictable. The entity is inherently antagonistic and its antagonism had provoked confrontation and conflict (and often destruction) before. Finally, the them entity reveals determination to develop and progress. We have seen in example (6) that such a characterization efficiently supports construals of an emerging threat which only grows if undealt with. There are two more examples to follow, which we take a closer look at.

The them against us proximization scenario

As has been mentioned, the discourse sequences construing proximization of the them impact on the us entities belong to the third category of the axiological proximization framework, which serves as an analytic handle on the interplay between discursive constructions of a potential threat and the actual materialization of that threat. Qualification in this category of the particular discourse items is subject to rigorous linguistic criteria, such as the specific order of verb phrase elements and the presence of nominal phrases marking respectively the us and them entities (cf. Table 2 earlier). That said, it is quite amazing to see in the L&J rhetoric so many discursive sequences that indeed qualify. The following two excerpts have been taken from a pool of 79 discourse structures that belong to the category. The particular noun and verb phrases responsible for the transition from the ‘remote possibility scenario’ to the ‘actual occurrence scenario’ (cf. Table 2) are highlighted in examples (9) and (10):¹³

(9) Our position has been clear from the beginning. The issue of immigration from the Middle East should be resolved where it has originated. By advancing freedom and democracy in Syria and Iraq, we help end a cycle of dictatorship and radicalism that brings millions of people to misery and frustration , and brings danger and, one day, tragedy, to our own people. (Beata Szydło, 3 October 2016)

(10) To those who are happy to welcome immigrants at our doors, I have a suggestion: go and see the Suruç camp.¹⁴ See the gangs and the riots. See the young Muslim criminals. See the anger, violence, and terror . It is there and is ready for export . This evil might not have reached us yet, but it is well in sight. And there is no-one in Brussels who can protect us when it comes. (Mariusz Błaszczak, 13 February 2017)

In example (9), Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydło sets up an explicit link between the social and political conditions which underlie lives of potential immigrants in their home countries (‘Syria and Iraq’), and the sociopsychological effects (‘misery and frustration’) which may bring about disastrous consequences later on, after the immigrants’ arrival in Poland (‘one day, tragedy, to our own people’). This argument helps Szydło legitimize the anti-immigration stance and policies of the L&J government, by strengthening the rationale for handling the immigration issue far away from EU/Polish borders. The argument unfolds in a linear manner, connecting the apparently remote visions with, eventually, closely happening events. At the lexico-grammatical level, nominal phrases are used to denote the us vs them (ideological) opposition (‘our people’ vs people living in ‘dictatorship and radicalism’), and verbal phrases (‘brings millions of people’, ‘brings danger’) are applied to proximize them’s anticipated impact. Altogether, the argument and the discursive transition from the ‘remote possibility scenario’ to the ‘actual occurrence scenario’ involve two nominal chunks and two verbal ones, as the axiological framework in Table 2 has it.

The same arrangement holds in example (10), where transition between the two scenarios involves a change in the modality of the text. While the first verbal chunk (VP1, in terms of the axiological framework) construes conditions for a possible/probable impact (‘is ready for export’), the second chunk (VP2) construes this impact as under way and already visible from the us camp (‘is well in sight’). The dynamics of such a two-step conceptual proximization are illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Proximization in Discourse Space (DS) in example (10).

Still, in comparison with example (9), the argument in example (10) reveals some differences. Specifically, the origin, or source, of the threat is markedly different, in geographical and geopolitical terms. The (Muslim) immigrants are geographically closer, and they are construed as inherently evil, rather than negatively affected. The us/them opposition is thus more acute, the conflict more ominous (‘anger, violence, and terror [are there] ready for export’), and the envisaged effects more destructive, partly because of the characteristics of the invader, and partly because of the vulnerability of the home camp (‘no-one in Brussels who can protect us when it [evil] comes’). Such a radical stance can be seen in multiple speeches and statements of L&J politicians, and is often reinforced by examples of Western countries’ negligence leading to tragic events. Błaszczak’s comments in example (10) come from a parliamentary debate on immigration and are a direct follow-up on a comment from another L&J member of parliament (MP), about identifying the perpetrator of the Nice terrorist attack (cf. note 12) as a Muslim refugee. This rhetorical strategy, concentrating upon the apparent lack of political responsibility of Poland’s opponents in the EU, complements the simple fear appeals that rest in descriptions of previous criminal acts committed by immigrants, such as in example (6).

As has been mentioned, the analyzed corpus includes as many as 79 such complex discourse structures, in which specific lexico-grammatical items occur in a linear order to construe, within the space of one, two or maximally three sentences, a subtle conceptual transformation of initially remote and largely abstract danger, into a concrete threat involving tangible consequences. This means that in the entire corpus (124 texts) the structures in question occur with the frequency of 0.78 instances per text. This ratio may be staggering already, but there are further striking observations. In the L&J anti-immigration discourse, threat element is construed only partly in micro-discursive structures, such as examples (9) or (10). In many cases, it emerges from much longer, macro-discursive narratives, involving entire texts or even sequences of texts. There, far more space is devoted first to characterization of the home group (as in examples (1)–(4)), then the antagonistic group (as in examples (5)–(8)), and only finally to conceptualization of the emerging conflict and clash.

Finally, it can be observed that threat construals in L&J’s discourse differ in intensity over time, perhaps relative to the party’s popularity with voters. This can be seen from the analysis of the monthly occurrences of the above micro-discursive proximization scenario (Table 3).¹⁵

Table 3.

Monthly occurrences of discourse sequences included in category 3 of the axiological framework.

Month	Number
November 2015	1
December 2015	0
January 2016	2
February 2016	4
March 2016	2
April 2016	3
May 2016	3
June 2016	3
July 2016	5
August 2016	3
September 2016	5
October 2016	5
November 2016	9
December 2016	7
January 2017	9
February 2017	8
March 2017	10
Total in corpus	79

Apparently, the intensity of threat construals rises steadily in response to L&J’s losses in opinion polls. While the L&J government used to enjoy a record-high support of 47% at the beginning of their rule in November 2015, its current (March 2017) popularity is at the level of 29%.¹⁶ This results in a continual radicalization of the L&J anti-immigration discourse. It seems that L&J leaders are trying harder and harder to play the immigration card to avert negative trends at the polls and restore public trust and support.

Conclusion

The L&J anti-immigration discourse does not pose peculiar analytic challenges – it is far from subtle and its strategies are quite straightforward to identify. Technically, they involve recurring patterns of threat construction which link negatively charged characterizations of the out-group to possibilities of the out-group’s growth and migration, and then to physically disastrous consequences for the in-group, namely Poland and Polish citizens. This scenario relies on the discursive narrowing of the conceptual distance between the two camps which occurs in the process of proximization. Most frequently used is the strategy of axiological proximization since it allows for a unique combination of ideological and material elements of coercion, due to which the initially abstract danger turns gradually into a tangible, physical threat. The threatening scenario thus involves, linguistically speaking, the presence of nominal and verbal phrases (as in examples (9)–(10) and Figure 2) which increase, step-by-step, the salience of happenings following the initial projection of the external impact. Such a construal is a handy prerequisite for enacting strong and legitimate leadership, whereby the political leader undertakes to prevent the threat or at least offset its negative effects.

Finally, from a more methodological standpoint, the apparent applicability of the proximization model to anti-immigration discourse encourages further empirical studies to endorse the explanatory power of Proximization as a theory. Recently, such explorations have been conducted in a number of domains beyond state political discourse, for example health and climate change (Cap, 2017; Knapton, 2016). It seems that the main analytic strength of Proximization is, as was shown in this article too, its ability to elucidate the dynamics of the them entity in the bipolar us vs them discourse configuration. This is due to the linguistic underpinnings of the model, such as the axiological framework, which make possible – as seen in Figure 2 – the abstraction of specific lexical choices responsible for different conceptual projections.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

This title is a translation of one of the gigantic banners held during the ‘Independence Parade’ on Poland’s Day of Independence, which saw 60,000 people marching through the streets of Warsaw on 11 November 2017. Several Western broadsheets, including The Times, The Guardian (2017), Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reported the parade as being ‘the biggest nationalistic march in Europe since the collapse of the Berlin Wall’ (see e.g. The Guardian, 2017).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Piotr Cap is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Łódź, Poland. His interests are in cognitive pragmatics, critical discourse studies, political linguistics, and genre theory. His most recent book is The Language of Fear: Communicating Threat in Public Discourse (Palgrave, 2017).

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