The practice of the rhetorical unconscious of political correctness in Polish newspaper coverage of the Ukraine crisis

This paper is an attempt to comprehensively study Polish national identity discourse, and examine to what extent it automated framing of newspaper coverage of a protracted event such as the Ukraine crisis in the period from late November 2013 until mid-March 2014. Lining out the key tensions of the discursive position of Poland as between Europe and the East, the analysis will show, by turning its focus to Ukraine, that the Oriental discourse of Eastern Europe did not negatively impact upon Polish foreign policy towards Ukraine. Instead, the paradigm for the same had been the Eastern mission exercised through European soft power, and this, as argued, was especially visible during the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The findings of the study of coverage in Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita suggest that the papers accept the Polish diplomatic stance on the Ukrainian cause as national mission. While the openly Orientalist discourse of the past was only observed in relation to Russia, the frames adopted reveal a persistently unequal portrayal of Ukraine as the little brother in need of guidance, resting on the assumption that such guidance is desired universally in Ukraine