“We put family at the centre of social life”: conceptual flipsiding of the “family” in discursive-political strategies of the Polish populist far-right

This article explores the conceptual redefinition of the “family” in the recent discourse of the Polish populist far-right. Looking at the far-right discourse as in many ways prototypical for contemporary, illiberal thinking about the “family,” we look at a number of discourse-conceptual dynamics that showcase its intensified, political and ideological use. Of these, we pay special attention to the process of “conceptual flipsiding” i.e. a strategy whereby the meaning of key social and political concepts is purposefully made ambiguous before being endowed, or “infused,” with various elements of openly illiberal understandings and imaginaries. Deploying Discourse-Conceptual Analysis (DCA), we show how the “family,” typically for the illiberal imagination, is not only framed in a conservative or a (neo)traditionalist way, but how some of its key sister-notions – often incorporated from liberal-democratic catalogue (for example those related to various “rights”) – are conceptually flipsided to strengthen the overall illiberal redefinition. We show thereby how the “family” thus becomes an entry point in the recontextualisation of wider public narratives and discursive traditions which, while redefining the “family,” also effectively suppress issues of inter alia, women’s rights, equal opportunities or any other than the strictly conservative visions of family, family planning or family and reproductive politics.