The global LGBTQ+ language in Polish transition narratives

Abstract

This article is concerned with the language of transition narratives on Polish social media, understood as the result of negotiations between the global LGBTQ+ language and local cultural discourses of gender and sexuality. The text consists of two main parts. The first part offers a short review of the existing literature on the history of Polish transition discourse from the 1960s and 1970s until the emergence of social media. Emblematic of this history is the change in the dominant terminology – the departure from the forms transseksualizm/transseksualność (‘transsexuality’) and the spread of the form transpłciowość (‘transgender identity’) – and the accompanying changes in the perception of this phenomenon: from an illness to a political and identity category. The second part of the article, based on the author’s own research, focuses on the process of shaping discourses of transition on Polish social media. This process has been divided into two main stages. The first stage, which can be called “Transnet 1.0”, is a time of anonymous blogs, mainly using the medium of written language, and the second stage – “Transnet 2.0” – is a time of multimedia (audiovisual) productions published on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube or TikTok. The empirical part of the article ends with a proposal to describe multilingual practices used on Polish YouTube channels dealing with the topic of gender transition in a way that shows how the Polish trans community builds the language of transition narratives, drawing on the “global LGBTQ+ sociolect” (Bassi, 2017) in a strategic, conscious, and creative way. I suggest interpreting the multilingual practices I study as an illustration of the ability to navigate between medical and identity discourses, between global trends and local traditions, and between the conciseness of English and the productivity of Polish grammar