Linguistic means of depreciating political opponents in Jerzy Urban’s features from 1995–2000
This article analyses Jerzy Urban’s 66 features which were published in the “Nie” weekly in 1995–2000. At that time, the magazine campaigned against right-wing politicians and clergy representatives. Features of the editor-in-chief, Jerzy Urban, were a weapon in that fight. For the purpose of humiliation, Urban used linguistic means typical of newspeak. In the analyzed material, linguistic creativity and competence typical of the idiolect of the editor-in-chief of the “Nie” weekly can be seen. The article presents the most popular linguistic means used for depreciation of political opponents. The linguistic means were excerpted from the research material and include: negative-evaluative words, neologisms, neosemantisms, contaminations, modifications of surnames among other things, using surnames in plural form and creating diminutive forms, irony, sarcasm, metaphors, and comparisons which aim at transferring negative features attributed to a particular phenomenon to a person being the target of attack.