Santo Subito, Bimberro Grande and Pico de Waszczykowski (2017 m) – a fictional country of San Escobar created in the Internet space (the impact of the context on the concept’s structure)

Abstract

On 10th January 2017, during a visit to the USA related to the UN summit in New York, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs informed in a briefing that he had established diplomatic relations with a country in the Caribbean named San Escobar. The next day he explained that it had been a linguistic mistake, but his words have already managed to liberate a huge linguistic activity of Internet users and trigger a series of communication events that eventually led to the formation (both at general and at more substantive level) of the concept in the Internet space – a fictional country. In the article the authors discuss the impact of the context on the structure of this playful notion. This is the context in which the statement that initiated the creation of a new fictional country was set up. The authors draw attention to the general situational context (including the context of the medium), the direct and indirect textual context, and the cognitive and cultural context.