Authors

Discussion

This paper examines how public discourse on the sex industry is shaped through terminological choices in Poland – a country marked by the convergence of Western activist discourse, post-socialist linguistic legacy and political polarisation. The focus lies on lexical choices related to gender, agency, morality, and labour, particularly in the terms used to refer to people involved in the sex trade.

The analysis is based on a qualitative corpus of texts published by Polish non-governmental organizations actively participating in public debate on the sex industry. The corpus represents contrasting ideological positions, specifically abolitionist and pro-decriminalization perspectives.

The study investigates the semantic content, formal structure, and internal motivation of selected terms in order to identify dominant strategies and tendencies in lexical innovation. These include loanwords, semantic redefinitions, and phraseological borrowings, which are analyzed in relation to their probable sources, such as Western political discourse, feminist theory, and legal language.

Key terms examined in the analysis include Polish expressions such as prostytutka (“prostitute”), but also neologisms: praca seksualna (“sex work”), przetrwanka przemysłu seksualnego (“sex trade survivor”), and osoba z doświadczeniem prostytucji (“person with experience of prostitution”).

The linguistic findings are interpreted within the broader cultural and political context that shapes contemporary Polish public conceptualizations of the sex industry.