PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 3 / 2015

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • Irena Szczepankowska : The official variant of Polish in the Old and Middle Polish period against other languages and functional styles
    This paper concerns the formation of the official variant of Polish in the mediaeval state of the Piast and Jagiellonian dynasties (until 1543) and its subsequent development in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (until the end of the 18th century). The author states that the Polish language was one of several codes which functioned in official communication at that time. Therefore, its condition and significance cannot be described in isolation from relations with languages such as Latin, German and Ruthenian. A substantial context for the development of the administrative variant is constituted also by evolution of other functional styles of the ethnic language. What is also important is changes in extra-linguistic areas (related to the legal system, socioeconomics and culture), which the author identifies, offering periodisation of the history of official Polish from Middle Ages to the present day in the conclusion part.
  • Ewa Woźniak : Continuity and change – the official language in the Modern Polish period
    This paper presents various factors that changed the conditions in which variants of official Polish functioned at the threshold of Modern Polish and the consequence of which were transformations at the layers of language and style as well as text and genre. They were: resignation from the use of Latin, codification of the law, transformations of the state system, development of bureaucracy, and loss of sovereignty. The performed review of the external considerations which determined evolution and continuity of the official variant of Polish was aimed at identifying postulated research areas. That period in the history of the official Polish language has not been an object of systematic studies based on reliable resources to date.
  • Ewa Kołodziejek : The official style lexis

    The object of this analysis is official lexis, which is a distinguishing feature of the constitutive characteristics of the official style: directiveness, impersonality, conventionality, preciseness, unambiguity. They are emphasised by modal verbs (winien (shall)), combined with infinitives (należy powołać (shall be appointed)), imperative forms (Palenie wzbronione! (Smoking prohibited!)), 3rd person verbs (decyzje podejmowane są (decisions are made)), verbs with the reflexive pronoun się (proponuje się (it is suggested)), impersonal verbs (zalecono (it was recommended)), passive participles (Wnioski nie będą rozpatrywane (Requests shall not be considered)), present participle (orzekając o uchyleniu postanowienia (adjudicating to reverse the decision)).

    The lexis characteristic of the official style is composed of: words specific to the chancellery style (uiszczać (to pay), niniejszy (the present)), terms (absencja chorobowa (absence due to illness)), analytical structures (ulec uszczegółowieniu (to be subject to generalisation)), lexical clichés (w ramach (as part of), w obszarze (within the area)), Brusselisms referring to the EU reality (akcesja (accession), anulacja (annulment)), neosemanticisms derived from English (aplikacja (an application), priorytet (a priority)), as well as – less frequently – foreign words (destynacja (a destination), a workshop), and fashionable words (dedykowany (dedicated)).

  • Iwona Burkacka : SIWZ, siwz or s.i.w.z. (ToR)? Comments about short notations of multi-word names

    This paper discusses problems related to coining and noting abbreviations and acronyms occurring in official texts on the example of the short form of specyfikacja istotnych warunków zamówienia (terms of reference). The multitude of notations used, randomness of advice and lack of consistency in prescriptive guidelines are indicated. Orthographic, graphic, semantic, inflectional and customary arguments speaking for selecting one of the forms in use are also invoked (SIWZ (ToR)).

    Terminological comments on applying the terms abbreviation and acronym with reference to forms such as SIWZ (ToR) or BHP (OHS) are provided in the background of detailed discussions.

  • Jarosław Łachnik : Phenomena characteristic of the official style syntax – based on an analysis of the language of individual interpretations of the tax law (selected problems)
    The aim of this paper is to demonstrate syntactic characteristics typical of official (legal) language on the example of selected individual interpretations of the tax law from the prescriptive viewpoint. The author informs what individual interpretations are, outlines the specificity of their preparation, and analyses the sentence (including compound-complex sentence) structure, syntactic relations between words, constituent order, etc. in detail. The author ponders on the (interpretational, logical, semantic and stylistic) consequences which can be brought by syntactic choices of authors of such interpretations. He also makes an attempts to indicate solutions that would eliminate syntactic errors occurring in the content of such interpretations. He points to the fact that the specificity of the language of interpretation can hardly be sought in the syntactic layer, or even in the lexical layer, of the analysed texts.
  • Adam Wolański : Notation of numbers in official texts
    This paper discusses methods of noting numbers in contemporary official texts in their variant characteristic of the official and chancellery style (letters and documents prepared by the state and local government administration) as well as of the official and legal style (normative acts). The introduction presents notions which are essential for this text, that is liczba (a number), cyfra (a digit) and liczebnik (a numeral). Afterwards, number systems used in the contemporary literature, their notations and names of large numbers are characterised. Further parts of this paper discuss normative and extra-normative rules of noting numbers in the form of digits, words as well as digits and words. Specific situations connected with noting numerical values of the units of measure in the SI system, numerical values of monetary units, calendar dates, time of day, human age and various types of numbers are also characterised here.

POLISH GRAMMAR

  • Anna Just : Goniec gramatyki polskiej (Messenger of the Polish grammar) by Maciej Dobracki – a promoter of the Polish language in Silesia

REPORTS, NOTICES, POLEMICS

  • Teresa Smółkowa : Comments about Obserwatorium Językowe Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego (Linguistic Observatory at the University of Warsaw) website

REVIEWS

  • Jolanta Kowalewska-Dąbrowska : Ewa Rogowska-Cybulska, Słownictwo na usługach reklamy. Mechanizmy tekstowe (Vocabulary at advertising’s service. Textual mechanisms), Gdańsk 2013
  • Małgorzata B. Majewska : Milena Hebal-Jezierska (ed.), Praktyczny przewodnik po korpusach języków słowiańskich (A practical guide to corpora of Slavonic languages), Warsaw 2014

EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

  • Kacper Kardas : Git ||gites in light of lexicographical and lexicological data

WORDS AND PHRASES

Wersja polska