The Linguistic Construction of Reality in the Black Book of Polish Censorship

Abstract

The Black Book of Polish Censorship is an important document of censorial practices in Poland in the 1970s. It is a collection of censoring regulations which worked preventively to silence or distort those aspects of Polish life which were uncomfortable for the communist establishment. Although the role of censorship in totalitarian regimes is well known, the linguistic mechanisms by which (a) information flow was controlled and (b) preferred constructions of reality were mediated, have not been studied. Arguing that the language of the Black Book was indicative of the organization of power in the Polish censorial institutions and in the country as a whole, we also demonstrate how censorship regulated the flow of information in such a way that the only acceptable version of reality was represented in the media, and that the censors posited themselves as gatekeepers of information.