Językowa stygmatyzacja i dyskryminacja środowiska LGBT+ na przykładzie leksyki współczesnej polszczyzny i różnogatunkowych wypowiedzi w konserwatywnym dyskursie publicznym

Andrzej S. Dyszak

Published: 2025-12-22

Vol. 829 No. 10 (2025)

Linguistic stigmatization and discrimination of the LGBT+ community as reflected in the lexis of contemporary Polish and in multi-genre statements within conservative public discourse

Andrzej S. Dyszak

Abstract

Words recorded in contemporary general Polish dictionaries as expressions of stigmatization and discrimination against LGBT+ people include, most notably, the nouns lesba (‘dyke’), ciota (‘queer’), pedał (‘faggot’), and pedzio (pedał-dim), all of which function as derogatory and/or contemptuous terms. An analysis of their meanings constitutes the introductory part of the article. Subsequent sections examine additional labels used to refer to LGBT+ individuals, such as sodomita (‘sodomite’), zwyrodnialcy (‘degenerates’), and dziwacy (‘freaks’), as well as expressions with figurative meanings, including chwasty (‘weeds’) and zaraza (‘plague’). The analysis also encompasses lexical items denoting behaviours and traits attributed to LGBT+ people, such as dewiacja (‘deviation’), wynaturzenie (‘degeneration’), and zboczenie (‘perversion’), along with terms referring to actions, for example obrzydlistwa/obrzydliwości (‘abominations’) and prowokacja (‘provocation’). Special attention is given to neologisms circulating in public discourse, including homopropaganda (‘homosexual propaganda’) and homoterror (‘homosexual terror’). The analyzed lexical items occur in a variety of public texts, such as songs, sermons, speeches, press and online articles, interviews, conversations, and television debates. They appear predominantly in utterances produced by speakers representing right-wing ideological positions, including a rapper, an archbishop, journalists, and politicians affiliated with the Law and Justice party. The article also addresses multi-word expressions that function as vehicles of contemptuous or exclusionary discourse, for instance promowanie homoseksualizmu/ideologii LGBT/pedofilii (‘promoting homosexuality/LGBT ideology/paedophilia’), propagowanie ideologii LGBT/pedofilii (‘propagating LGBT ideology/paedophilia’), obnoszenie się z seksualnością (‘flaunting sexuality’), as well as the phrase LGBT to ideologia (‘LGBT is an ideology’). The analysis focuses primarily on the semantic properties of linguistic means used to construct negative representations of minorities referred to by the acronym LGBT+.

Keywords:

LGBT+, meanings of words and multi-word expressions, linguistic stigmatization, discrimination

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Dyszak, A. S. (2025). Linguistic stigmatization and discrimination of the LGBT+ community as reflected in the lexis of contemporary Polish and in multi-genre statements within conservative public discourse. Poradnik Językowy, 829(10), 75–89. Retrieved from https://www.journals.polon.uw.edu.pl/index.php/pj/article/view/1955

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.