Jak mówić o Innym? Między milczeniem a poprawnością polityczną

Abstract

The article presents a specific aspect of language education, which is talking about different types of minorities, viz. existential, cultural and ideological ones. This problem is becoming of particular importance in the era of rapidly expanding areas of intercultural communication. In the Polish language education practice over the last several decades there have formed three models of speaking about the Other: blurring differences, conscious overlooking of the impact of ethnic,national and religious minorities on the form of the Polish tradition and culture; sustaining and fixing the stereotypical image of other nationalities, leading to identification of the different with otherness; linking attitudes towards representatives of other nations with ideological premises. Nowadays traditional models should be subjected to revaluation and it needs finding a language which can be used to speak about the Other in a way that they will not become Alien. In order to do so, it is necessary to take a suitable standpoint towards political correctness.