Language Discrimination in Polish Public Discourse (Example of Polish Football Fans Discourse)

Abstract In the urban space of Łódź, this paper studies some anti–Semitic aspects of discriminatory discourse of football fans. Its main goal is to present how anti-Semitic discriminatory meanings are formulated and spread in the urban space and how particular social groups (football fans) organize the urban discourse. In the multimodal material from the urban discourse, we scrutinize verbal and visual forms of discrimination captured on the walls of buildings, parks, or shopping centres in various stickers, posters, and flags. This paper implies that the language of particular social groups goes beyond closed internet communication or stadium discourse to a more open social sphere. A consequence of the social polarization found in the analysed data may be the radicalization and vulgarization of language in general.