The discursive dimension of human rights : identity and diversity discourses within contemporary Polish debates

Abstract

Samples of Polish contemporary social debates - official and non-official - about minorities’ rights, gender mainstreaming, national identity and European integration are analysed by using the methodology of discourse analysis. The framework adopted is multidisciplinary because it draws, in defining discursive contexts, on different social sciences, above all history, cultural studies and linguistics. The approach is at the same time multiperspectival, for it applies to the study of the ‘texts’ included in the corpus different discursive analytical perspectives, giving priority though to Discursive Psychology and Critical Discourse Analysis. The realm of human rights/values is treated as main ‘order of discourse’, that is a terrain which different and opposite discourses compete to fill with their meanings. The analysis of different discursive practices and of the language employed therein highlights the discursive construction of ideological oppositions thus fostering a constructivist (and nonabsolutist) view of social identities and categories . Human rights are treated as an ideology themselves and the issue of cultural relativism is also raised and analysed in a discursive perspective.