Expressing Veracity Reserve in the Secret Service Records of the Polish People’s Republic and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria

The analysis of the language of the security service employees in the Polish People’s Republic and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, made on the basis of the CHS “Bolek” and the CHS “Sabina” files, showed that there is a certain feature that appears extremely often in the examined files, even though its occurrence in administrative and legal texts should be pretty sporadic. It is a very high frequency of using forms that express the veracity reserve. This shows how much the authors of the notes wanted to emphasise their own reserve to the truthfulness of the content provided by the confidential human sources (CHS).


Expressing Veracity Reserve in the Secret
Service Records of the Polish People's Republic and the People's Republic of Bulgaria (on the Example of the CHS Bolek and CHS Sabina Files)

Secret Service files
A great deal of interest is held by former socialist bloc countries in information collected by the security services during the communist regime.So-called 'portfolios' are a frequent element of political games, and their publication arouses heated emotions and controversy.The denunciations and official memos written over the years are analysed mainly by historians and archivists.Language in these documents, however, remains largely unresearched.
In Poland, only a short dictionary of communist intelligence (Paczkowski, 2004), Zakłamany słownik, czyli żargon funkcjonariuszy bezpieczeństwa PRL (Dojka, 2011) and articles analysing the linguistic layer were published (cf.Jastrzębska-Golonka, 2020;Misiak, 2020).On the ground of the Bulgarian language, there is still a lack of this type of research, and a confrontational analysis of the documents, arousing so much controversy in the former socialist bloc countries, is not conducted at all.The authors of the aforementioned Polish texts use terms such as operational language or professional jargon of service officers (pl.język operacyjny, żargon środowiskowy funkcjonariuszy) (Misiak, 2020, p. 187).A departmental language or departmental jargon (pl.język resortowy, żargon resortowy) also appears in historical studies (Sokołowski & Żydonik, 2019, p. 28).Historian and mountaineer Andrzej Paczkowski uses the term departmental licentia poetica (pl.resortowa licentia poetica) (Pleskot & Paczkowski, 2019, p. 238).There are also opinions by Lech Wałęsa's interpreters, A. M. Mydlarska and W. Kubiński.They comment on the language of the denunciations, arguing that the materials contained in the so-called Kiszczak Files could not have been prepared by the future President of Poland because they are written in a language strange to Lech Wałęsa (Kubiński & Mydlarska, 2017).
All these experts' testimonials show that the language of the security services' portfolios should not only be studied by archivists and historians, but also by linguists.Bridging this research gap may help to answer many interesting questions: whether the language of denunciations forms a separate genre within the administrative variety of legal language, or perhaps within the broader field of judiciary linguistics; whether denunciation writers were keeping their idiolect or changing their style for the purposes of the 'task'; whether it is possible to establish the authenticity of the files on the basis of confronting the texts of denunciations with the idiolect of the person suspected of collaboration; whether the Security Service employees had their own technolect and, if so, what were its characteristics.All the above-mentioned tasks can be divided into two de facto groups: the language of the secret informers (tipsters), and the language of the employees of the security services.There is no doubt that a confrontational analysis comparing the language of denunciation in various countries of the former socialist bloc can produce interesting results (cf.Mazurkiewicz-Sułkowska, 2020b).

Language of secret service employees on the basis of analysis of the CHS Bolek and CHS Sabina files
This article examines the language of secret service personnel in a confrontational aspect, using the example of two portfolios from two former socialist countries: the People's Republic of Poland and the People's Republic of Bulgaria.In both countries, the discussion about the cooperation of public trust persons with the communist special services is very heated.In Poland, the disclosure of the file attributed to former President Lech Wałęsa (alleged CHS 'Bolek') undoubtedly aroused the strongest emotions, while in Bulgaria the information about the existence of the file of the well-known intellectual Julia Kristeva (alleged CHS 'Sabina') had the same echo.
It should be emphasised that both Lech Wałęsa and Julia Kristeva deny cooperation with the security services and claim that the files are forged.The documents made available to the public cannot form the basis for an analysis -especially a confrontational one -of the language of the secret collaborators for several reasons.First of all, there is no certainty that the denunciations are authentic, nor is it possible to compare the language of an uneducated trade union activist with that of an intellectual who speaks several languages.However, these documents, whether they concern Lech Wałęsa or Julia Kristeva, provide the researcher with an opportunity to compare the specialist polylect of security service employees in the two countries of the so-called Eastern Bloc (both files are written by several people).
A detailed analysis of the technolect of the Lech Wałęsa and Julia Kristeva files authors is presented in the article Język pracowników służb specjalnych w Polskiej Rzeczpospolitej Ludowej i w Bułgarskiej Republice Ludowej (na przykładzie analizy teczek TW "Bolek" i TW "Sabina") (Mazurkiewicz-Sułkowska, 2020b).This analysis showed that the files in question differ fundamentally.The case of CHS "Bolek" is compiled by four members of the Security Service.The language of the officers interviewing initially the recruited person, and then CHS, is characterised by a style that can certainly be described as a legal-administra tive, with impersonal forms, templateness, and standardisation inherent in the language of state offices.
Reading the material drawn up by the SS staff, we have no doubt that this is a kind of specialised language, which is largely terminologised.Besides, it is an example of relatively correct language, where, besides numerous punctuation errors, only occasional spelling errors appear.The portfolio of the Bulgarian-French intellectual Julia Kristeva contains notes written down by two secret service employees.
Unlike the so-called "Bolek Files", the Sabina's files has very few features of legal-administrative language (above all, these are anaphoric expressions, increased frequency of use of the passive side and participle phrases).Reading CHS Sabina Files, from a linguistic point of view, absolutely does not resemble CHS Bolek Files.Kristeva's portfolio, as already mentioned, hardly exhibits the features of official language, while it is distinguished by something else: the downright gigantic linguistic ineptitude of the lead officer.The number of grammatical, spelling, stylistic, and punctuation errors is so high that simply listing and classifying them would suffice for a separate study.In general, the CHS Sabina Files give the impression that we are faced with a collection of texts written in rather general language, with few linguistic administrative-legal markers.This is the language of people with a blatantly low linguistic culture, who have not mastered the basic principles of linguistic correctness (cf.Mazurkiewicz-Sułkowska, 2020b).

The linguistic exponents of the veracity reserve in the CHS Bolek and CHS Sabina Files
In spite of such significant differences, there is one feature that unites the two files analysed.It appears in the documents examined above often, even though its occurrence in administrative-legal texts should be sporadic.It is about the high frequency of the use of forms expressing veracity reserve.The analysis of the files leaves no doubt that their authors made every effort and used all possible linguistic means to express a distance from the veracity of the information obtained from the CHS.It is worth pointing out that the analysis of the degree of conviction of secret service operatives about the veracity of the information received is a separate issue worthy of extensive linguistic analysis, especially within judiciary linguistics.This article is intended to only show an outline of this issue.The content described in the SS memos is always secondary communication, and as is well known, veracity reserve is most often paired with renarration.These concepts in the literature are usually considered within issues such as epistemic modality and evidentiality.Whereby epistemic modality is indicative of the degree of the speaker's belief in the truthfulness of the judgement being made, while the exponents of evidentiality are used to convey renarration (Bojar, 1996, pp. 27-43;Grzegorczykowa, 2001, pp. 121-136).
It should be noted, however, that more often than not these two concepts occur together, since the very coding of the fact of receiving second-hand information removes the responsibility of the sender for the veracity of the transmitted judgment.Thus, the exponent of the use of evidentiality is, as a rule, also the exponent of epistemic evaluation (Holvoet, 2011, p. 86).
In the Slavic Studies' literature, one can come across another term, imperceptive modality, which simultaneously contains the two elements mentioned above: renarration and veracity reserve.According to the authors of the Gramatyka konfrontatywna bułgarsko-polska (Korytkowska & Roszko, 1997) an imperceptive sentence paraphrase contains at least 2 sentences whose predicates refer to at least two informative acts -the present and the primary: X said that Y said that Z, but X is not sure that Z.In the remainder of this article, only the term imperceptivity will be used, as it allows for a synthetic expression of the two important, for this study, components of the deep structure of the sentences under discussion (secondary nature of the message and veracity reserve).
Most languages realise the semantic structure of an imperceptive sentence on a surface level by means of lexical exponents.However, some, in the course of evolution, have developed a separate morphological category expressing a grammaticalised imperceptive modality.On the ground of Slavic languages, an example is Bulgarian, which, together with Macedonian, has a wide range of narrative forms (the so-called non-witness mode) (Куцаров, 1984, 1994; Макарцев, 2008; Ницолова, 2007, 2008).
In Polish, the semantic structure of an imperceptive sentence is realised primarily by means of lexical exponents of the type podobno, rzekomo, jakoby.Numerous linguistic analyses have already been performed on modal particles of this type (Czapiga, 2005;Honowska, 1984;Puk, 2013).At the same time, the occurrence of renarration and veracity reserve in Polish is expressed by the construction mieć (to have) + infinitive, which can be regarded as a paramorphological exponent of the imperceptive modality in this language (Korytkowska & Roszko, 1997;Nowakowska, 2017, pp. 221-246).
The analysis of the examined portfolios, in terms of the expression of imperceptive modality, yielded very interesting results.The Bulgarian file of CHS "Sabina" is surprising in that it is almost 90% written in the so-called non-witness mode.Narrative forms definitely dominate in all the case notes, cf.:1 В колоквиума щяли да участвуват освен французи и италиянци, холанци и някои други чужди представители… It could be assumed that the Bulgarian secret service employee used narrative forms exclusively for their renarrative function, nullifying the veracity reserve in the process.Closer analysis of the material, however, does not support this thesis, since at moments when the officer had no reservations about the veracity of something, while maintaining renarration, he most often opted for indicative forms of the resultative perfect tense, cf.: Веднага трябва да добавя, че тя заедно с мъжа си са преминали окончателно на маоистски позиции… Източникът е пребивавал от 13 до 28 февруари т.г.в Близкия изток и участвувал в симпозиума по Палестинския въпрос организиран в Кувейт под патронажа на Емира на страната… The analysis of the sentence above shows that the officer has no doubt about CHS's stay in the Middle East between 13 and 28 July, while the remaining information (about attending the Symposium) is already expressed in narrative forms.The Perfect Tense, thanks to its resultative character (it expresses the resultative state implied by the earlier event), offers the possibility of renarrating the event without a concomitant veracity reserve.However, it appears in the Sabina's portfolio extremely rarely.
It is interesting to note that forms of the resultative Perfect Tense are often preceded by phrases that emphasise the certainty of the information being conveyed, as in the following sentence, where the perfectum form is preceded by the statement "the source has knowledge that…".

На източника е известно че са били поканени видни общественици.
There is a sense that the officer twice emphasised the belief in the veracity of the message received.First, lexically, and then through the use of the resultative tense in the indicative.
The conscious use of narrative forms is evidenced not only by the use of the perfect tense in situations where the officer emphasises that he does not doubt the information received, but also by the use (to convey the so-called second-hand information) of indicative forms of the present tense.This is a procedure that is very characteristic of Bulgarian, where the frequent use of the grammatical present tense makes it possible to formulate a relatively neutral message, in terms of veracity value, e.g.
…Луи Арагон продължава своята линия на несъгласие с линията на Партията […] все по-открито отива към разбирателство и даже сътрудничество със сюрреалистите… An analysis of the CHS Bolek Files leads to similar conclusions.In the Polish text, there are frequent exponents of veracity reserve, which are surprising all the more because the files of Bolek, as it was pointed out earlier, has very many features of legal-administrative language, and exponents of imperceptiveness are absolutely not appropriate to this style.It is clear from their frequency of use that the author of the memos wanted to emphasise his veracity reserve.Both lexical markers and the paramorphological construction mieć + Infinitive are used in the texts, e.g.: There are times when the officer is so desperate for emphasis on reserve that he uses amplified forms, consisting of both the lexical exponent and the construction mieć + Infinitive, doubly emphasising his doubt about the veracity of the message received: Po odbiciu karty zegarowej Wałęsa L. opuścił stocznię i udał się do domu skąd miał rzekomo nigdzie nie wychodzić.
An additional procedure, used by the Polish officers of the communist security services, is to strengthen the renarration by adding verbum dicendi, and, as mentioned earlier in this article, the mere encoding of the fact of having received second-hand information removes from the sender the responsibility for the veracity of the transmitted judgment (Holvoet, 2011, p. 86).
There is also the explicit opinion of the lead officer that the source is not fully objective, adds his own conjecture to the information provided and can exaggerate, ex.: Niemnej jednak musi on być systematycznie kontrolowany przez inne źródła informacji gdyż były wypadki, że niektóre fakty wyolbrzymiał.

Summary
Summing up all the considerations, it can be stated that, despite significant stylistic and linguistic differences between the analysed files, one thing undoubtedly unites them: the aspiration of the security service employees to emphasise their own reserve of veracity towards the contents provided by the secret collaborators.This fact is surprising, all the more so because in both CHS Bolek's and CHS "Sabina's" files, the sources are marked as "trusted".The lead officers also emphasise that the "sources" can be trusted, cf.
W tym czasie dał się poznać jako jednostka zdyscyplinowana i chętna do współpracy.This is contradicted, however, by linguistic analysis.The high frequency of use of forms expressing veracity reserve also contradicts two views dominant in the literature, that these forms are extremely rare in administrative and official language and that both Bulgarian narrative forms and the Polish paramorphological construction mieć + infinitive are primarily a feature of post-1989 media language.Then, extra-linguistic factors such as the creation of sensationalism, the pursuit of information, the desire to be the first to make it public, and the concomitant fear of being held accountable for giving uncertain information, prompted both languages -with a developed grammatical category expressing an imperceptive modality and languages without the need for truthful judgement of every message -to use more frequently a whole range of forms, enabling the distancing of veracity (Batorowska et al., 2019, pp. 37-38;Mazurkiewicz-Sułkowska, 2020a;Ostromęcka-Frączak, 2016, p. 85;Лазарова, 2011;Метева-Русева, 2009;Ницолова, 1999).An analysis of the Security Service files shows that this tendency was already present earlier, among other things in the technolects of the secret services.The analysis of the language of the security service employees in the Polish People's Republic and the People's Republic of Bulgaria, made on the basis of the CHS "Bolek" and the CHS "Sabina" files, showed that there is a certain feature that appears extremely often in the examined files, even though its occurrence in administrative and legal texts should be pretty sporadic.It is a very high frequency of using forms that express the veracity reserve.This shows how much the authors of the notes wanted to emphasise their own reserve to the truthfulness of the content provided by the confidential human sources (CHS).