| Author | Jarosław Pacuła |
|---|---|
| Title | Signs of the time. About the horse of Anders and the names of other „investigative methods” from the period of People’s Poland |
| Keywords | lexicology, historicism, sovietism, names of torture, Polish People’s Republic |
| Pages | 363-383 |
| Full text | |
| Volume | 32 |
The author of the article described names of harassments applied by officers of security services in the investigation (the secret police in communist Poland) in 1944‒1989 years. He gathered abundant lexical material from the relations of persecuted people and supplemented it with data from studies of historians. The author extensively presented the origin of expressions most often appearing in files: the horse of Anders (koń Andersa), the stilt of Anders (pal Andersa) and the ride to Anders (jazda do Andersa). Language analysis was carried out within the historical context. The author presented also other names of tortures and showed that some of them had their origins in Soviet Russian. Further, he also emphasized the destructiveness of of seemingly innocent terms.