Artykuł omawia genezę, właściwości i rozwój metody badania słów i wyrażeń sztandarowych, podkreślając zasługi jej twórcy – Walerego Pisarka – oraz rolę czynników kontekstowych (w tym zwłaszcza doświadczeń i zasług Ośrodka Badań Prasoznawczych w Krakowie). Twórca metody był zwolennikiem rozwijania politolingwistyki, relatywnie nowej w Polsce subdyscypliny wiedzy badającej związki między rzeczywistością pozajęzykową (polityką) a odmianą języka opisującego politykę i stosowanego przez polityków. Pracując nad metodą badań, Pisarek łączył ogólne założenia politolingwistyki z założeniami aksjologii, wkomponowując wszystko w wyznaczniki empirycznego prasoznawstwa. Tym samym metoda badania słów i wyrażeń sztandarowych łączy możliwości poznawcze semantyki, lingwistyki, analizy słów kluczy i socjologii, umożliwiając diagnozę dynamiki świadomości społecznej na podstawie empirycznie badanego nastawienia do treści wybranych słów sztandarowych: pozytywnych mirandów i negatywnych kondemnandów. Poza opisem założeń metodologicznych tekst zawiera również omówienie największej ogólnopolskiej akcji badań słów i wyrażeń sztandarowych Polaków, przeprowadzanych w latach 1990–1999 przez Walerego Pisarka i zespół OBP. Jego ostatnia część dotyczy kontynuacji badań Profesora i głównych ścieżek rozwoju metody wytyczanych przez uczniów Walerego Pisarka.

Walery Pisarek’s Method of the Banner Words Analysis – the Key to Understand the Dynamics of Social Awareness

The article focuses on the analysis of banner words and phrases – the method of research originally conceptualized and tested by Walery Pisarek in the Press Research Centre in Kraków. The very methodology is pictured by its roots, basic features and lines of development, particularly within the context of the Centre’s research experiences and resources of the ‘golden era of 1970–1980’. Walery Pisarek himself attempted to develop this method in the close context of politolinguistics – a relatively new (in Poland) sub-discipline of the humanities, aiming at an explanation of the relations between extra-linguistic reality (mainly politics), the language used to describe politics and politicians’ language. In his conceptual works Pisarek was combining the general assumptions of philosophy of language and political speech with the assumptions of axiology, successfully trying to incorporate this methodology into empirical media and communication knowledge. The method of banner words analysis, thus, draws extensively from semantics, linguistics, key words analysis, philosophy of values but also from sociology, opening a convincing approach to an empirical diagnosis of social awareness, based on the respondents’ selection of their most relevant positive banner words (miranda), as well as the negative ones (kondemnanda). Following its methodological aspects, the text discusses the case of a national representative survey, carried out in the Press Research Centre between 1990 and 1999, with the focus on Polish banner words reconstruction, their rankings, systems and semantics. The original methodology of Walery Pisarek has been followed up by his students, who have been blazing the trail for future implementations of this method.

The article focuses on the analysis of banner words and phrases – the method of research originally conceptualized and tested by Walery Pisarek in the Press Research Centre in Kraków. The very methodology is pictured by its roots, basic features and lines of development, particularly within the context of the Centre’s research experiences and resources of the ‘golden era of 1970–1980’. Walery Pisarek himself attempted to develop this method in the close context of politolinguistics – a relatively new (in Poland) sub-discipline of the humanities, aiming at an explanation of the relations between extra-linguistic reality (mainly politics), the language used to describe politics and politicians’ language. In his conceptual works Pisarek was combining the general assumptions of philosophy of language and political speech with the assumptions of axiology, successfully trying to incorporate this methodology into empirical media and communication knowledge. The method of banner words analysis, thus, draws extensively from semantics, linguistics, key words analysis, philosophy of values but also from sociology, opening a convincing approach to an empirical diagnosis of social awareness, based on the respondents’ selection of their most relevant positive banner words (miranda), as well as the negative ones (kondemnanda). Following its methodological aspects, the text discusses the case of a national representative survey, carried out in the Press Research Centre between 1990 and 1999, with the focus on Polish banner words reconstruction, their rankings, systems and semantics. The original methodology of Walery Pisarek has been followed up by his students, who have been blazing the trail for future implementations of this method.