Religious language in politics : the case of Polish radicals in exile, 1828-1852

The aim of this article is to examine the issue of religious language within the framework of the discourse of Polish radicals in exile in the period 1828-1852. The first part defines the research question concerning the structures of discourses, types of arguments, and the meaning of key concepts. The next part sketches the development of religious language from the very beginning of the exile period (using the sojourn of Ludwik Królikowski and Bogdan Jański in Paris as an example) until the most elaborate stage of this discourse’s development in the 1840s. The third part touches upon different dimensions of religious language, its critics, the reasons for its use by its proponents, and the question of conceptual transfers from other linguistic contexts. In the conclusion I discuss the role of religious language as a medium of political modernization.