Legal and Non-Legal Image of Fox Hunting and Shooting – the Impact of Globalization on National and International Perceptions of the World

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide some insight into legal definitions of fox hunting in the United Kingdom and polowanie na lisy in the Republic of Poland and to scrutinize the differences in the legal meaning of the two terms in question and their social perception. The goal of the study is to show that apparently similar concepts may in fact differ significantly and treating them as equivalents may lead to miscommunication. The author will apply the following research methods: the comparative law analysis of legal concepts of fox hunting and polowanie na lisy, and the lexical analysis of the terms in question in legal and non-legal genres. The research findings strongly indicated that globalization and social media have a massive impact on perceptions of various phenomena by people, who frequently stereotype the reality, assuming that well-distributed and popularized “foreign” is identical to “native”. The misunderstanding of such culture-bound terminology may have serious consequences which are already visible in social debates and may negatively affect the legislative process.