THE CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY AND ITS PROFILING IN GERMAN AND POLISH: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

The purpose of this paper is a contrastive analysis of the concept of 'democracy' in the German and Polish languages, along with a presentation of the modes of its conceptualisation in modem Polish and German public discourse. The methodological basis is provided by the assumptions of the Lublin school of cognitive ethnolinguistics. The linguistic materials derive from three types of sources: dictionaries of the German and Polish languages, empirical surveys and press texts. Based on these, a set of basic definition features were defined in the understanding of 'democracy' (the so-called "set of basic features") common for various discourses in both languages. The sets of features assigned to 'democracy' on the basis of specialist discourses, diverse both ideologically and with respect to their worldview, were listed. The profiling of the concept of 'democracy' was outlined on the basis of texts derived from both the German and Polish press with liberal-conservative and leftist-liberal profiles.