Amadeusz Citlak

This article is an attempt to apply a modern social psychology thesis to reproduce a linguistic image of non-Christian Jews in chosen narratives taken from the Greek canonical Gospels of the New Testament. In the first century AD, non-Christian Jews and primitive Christians found themselves in a state of growing ideological conflict resulting in marked changes in their social relations and mutual perceptions. While remaining in close connection with the usage of language and discourse creation, these changes led to the adoption of new linguistic strategies among primitive Christians, thanks to which the image of non-Christian Jews took on over the course of the following years characteristics of negative stereotypes. A structural model has been used to analyse Christian texts, allowing for consistent and uniform comparisons of available sources. The aim of this paper therefore is an attempt to recreate linguistic characteristics of Jews in primitive Christian documents. There is also an alternative proposal for the analysis of stereotypes against that which has been used for many years in the study of anti-Judaism in historical documents. I will present the theoretical context (a short historical outline) and accepted psychological theories.

This article is an attempt to apply a psycholinguistic tools to reconstruct a linguistic image of the non-Christian Jews in chosen narratives taken from the Greek canonical Gospels of the New Testament. In this part of the analysis, I would like to use the basic and empirically confirmed thesis of the linguistic category model and attribution processes, which are crucial when analysing the language of negative stereotypes.

I will present the text analysis, results and interpretation.