Commission on Communication Ethics

The Communication Ethics Commission was formed in 2019. Its predecessors were the Ethical Language Observatory of Warsaw University, which was established in 2013, and the Ethical Language Team at the Council for the Polish language (under the auspices of PAN), which existed from 2016–2019.  We owe the formation of the Communication Ethics Commission to the efforts of Jadwiga Puzynina – its honorary chair – and Lucjan Suchanek. It brings together linguists concerned with the study of language from an ethical perspective – in its relation to the values that underpin our culture and, in particular, the values on which communities are built and the ways in which they are expressed, sustained, and invalidated.
To treat the participants in it as subjects is considered a basic condition for ethical communication and language users should be persuaded to adopt this attitude. The commission organises conferences and seminars. It is also involved in educational initiatives, which it believes create awareness of the responsible use of language and can halt its degradation as an instrument of communication and mitigate the effects of dangerous speech, hate, aggression, and verbal violence.

Commission Members