Lexicographic image of the term “censorship” in dictionaries and encyclopedias published in the Polish People’s Republic and in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Abstract

So far, much attention has been paid to the language of official propaganda of the socialist era. However, there are no publications on the semantics of the term “censorship” in the context of the socialist system. In order to fill this gap, the authors analyzed the definitions of the word censorship recorded in selected dictionaries and encyclopedias published in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (from 1940 to 1991) and the Polish People’s Republic (in the years 1959–1988). The research aims to reconstruct and compare the images of censorship recorded in lexicographic definitions and to establish whether the image of this concept changed due to the extension of freedom of speech in both countries. The study shows that the official ideology has a significant impact on language in the form of a unification of the definition of censorship in both countries.