Wellbeing and Collective Identity in Polish and English Contexts

Abstract

The focus of the paper are types of and differences in collective group identity patterns that evolve from the analysis of materials from Polish and English public Internet space (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2013a, 2013b). The examples we discuss involve the British 38 Degrees movement on the one hand (Wilson 2013), and Polish Internet discourses concerning the abortion legislature-related movement (Czarny Protest ‘Black Protest’) and the medical residents’ protests, on the other. We propose that these types of scenarios invariably involve attempts to achieve a state of wellbeing by the participants and that there are two variants of the relevant scenarios—conflict and cooperation. The first part of the paper discusses the concept of identity and presents the cultural background of Polish and English communities and a description of the British 38 Degrees organization, with over one million members, that campaigns on a number of diverse social and political issues. Polish Internet communication is exemplified in comments of different groups of users on current events presented in on-line press articles, in particular exchanges concerning the abortion legislation issue and the medical residents’ protest. We investigate the dynamics of the particular events, their basic emotionality axis and relate them to differences in English and Polish cultural models as investigated in cultural and cultural linguistic research Hofstede (1980; Sharifian (2017). The topics of the exchanges involve a range of varying discourse strategies and their linguistic realization (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2015). The process of particular importance in this context involves the mechanism of emergent culture-bound identity in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), grounded in a sense of common emotionality around issues that are predominantly of a social and political character.