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Marian Bugajski : Pragmatics versus normative linguistics
The main justification for addressing this topic is
the unsatisfactory level of linguistic culture, which is
indicated by both linguists and speakers of Polish.
Observation of the achievements in pragmatics and
normative linguistics leads to the conclusion that
boundaries of linguistics, including boundaries of the
theory of linguistic culture, which are difficult to
specify today, are expanding under the influence of
pragmatic investigations. Research show that this is
the reason why the level of linguistic communicative
competence leaves a lot to be desired, which is
particularly noticeable in the media and in schools.
This paper is theoretical in nature as it provides an
overview of achievements in pragmatics and their
impact on normative linguistics.
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Anna Piotrowicz,
Małgorzata Witaszek-Samborska : Permanence and changeability of a linguistic fashion – fi fty years after Danuta Buttler’s publication
The lapse of half a century from the publication
of the first theoretical paper on fashionable words by
Danuta Buttler in “Przegląd Humanistyczny” inspired
the authors of this paper to examine this cultural and
linguistic phenomenon in terms of its permanence //
changeability from the contemporary perspective. The
comparison of words considered fashionable a few
dozen years ago (by Danuta Buttler in her paper and
handbook of linguistic culture of Polish and by editors
of Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny [Dictionary of Polish
usage] of 1973 – by Witold Doroszewski and Halina
Kurkowska) with lexemes codified as fashionable today
(by Andrzej Markowski – the author of a new handbook
of linguistic culture of Polish for students and the
editor of Wielki słownik poprawnej polszczyzny [Great
dictionary of Polish usage]) led to conclusions about the
permanence of the linguistic fashion phenomenon, the
media being the major source of popularising this
fashion (however, with a change of the lexical register
into the colloquial one), the necessity to review the
linguistic nomenclature (the term fashionable meanings
instead of fashionable words) and the need to develop
instruments objectivising the intuitive observations
made to date.
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Mirosław Bańko : Sentences such as Rury przedziurawiły dzieci (The children punched holes in the pipes/The pipes punched holes in the children) in the contemporary Polish press
This paper analyses Polish sentences such as
Rury przedziurawiły dzieci, which are ambiguous due
to syncretism of the nominative and accusative cases of
both nouns (each of them can be translated into
English in two ways, e.g. The children punched holes in
the pipes and The pipes punched holes in the children).
Researchers have discussed sentences of this type
before but the diagnosis to the problem has been
sometimes improper, their normative evaluation
simplified, and the research material rather meagre,
excerpted manually. In this paper the National Corpus
of Polish (NKJP) is used for the purpose of reviewing the
data on proportions of SVO and OVS structures in
sentences belonging to the discussed type. Additionally,
the potential of one of the search engines serving NKJP
is demonstrated in order to aid grammarians. The
paper provides a range of detailed observations and one
general conclusion: sentences of the discussed type
should be avoided because their word order does not
fulfil a distinctive function, and in the case of the ones
which cannot be eliminated, the sender ought to
incorporate information enabling unambiguous
interpretation.
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Ewa Kołodziejek : Krem dla komfortu Twojej skóry (A cream for the comfort of your skin) – about a (not) new syntactic structure popularised by advertisements
This paper is a historical and normative
reflection concerning syntactic structured with the
preposition for. Using contemporary advertising
catchphrases as examples, the author analyses the
process of expanding the scope of usage of the
preposition for, quotes historical opinions of linguists,
and concludes that the unending popularity of such
structures (disapproved by the language norm)
results not only from foreign language influence but
also from changes occurring in the syntactic
structure of the Polish language.
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Barbara Boniecka : Professional language, jargon or simply colloquialism (based on utterances of doctors and patients)
The intention of the author is to juxtapose an
interlocution model assumed between the patient and
the doctor and its realisations in authentic real life
situations. The point here is to capture the fixed
content components and stylistic variations in
content realisation as well as to indicate the possible
peculiar linguistic behaviours and actions of both
parties. The author also sets herself the task of
finding a justification for peculiarities, if any.
It is stated in the conclusions that the doctor –
patient interaction, although realised in an imperfect
manner, may be in effect perceived as acceptable and
reasonable (in its thematic root it concerns the
patient’s health and is among the doctor’s
professional interests), even if it not perfectly suitable
due to its colloquialism and categories of
impersonality, indefiniteness, imagery and
emotionality.
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Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska,
Marek Radomski : Opinions of foreigners about Polish pronunciation and opinions of Poles about use of Polish by foreigners. A questionnaire study
As more and more foreigners undertake to learn
Polish and as more and more Poles are exposed to
different versions of their mother tongue, it is worth
examining how these two groups of senders and
recipients perceive and evaluate their communication
via foreign-accented Polish. We are particularly
interested in the issue of Polish pronunciation and its
perception by native listeners. In this paper we present
a questionnaire study concerning this matter
administered to 42 foreign learners of Polish from 15
countries, 80 native listeners and 36 teachers of Polish
as a foreign language.
In order to attain the general aim outlined above,
we intend to obtain answers to the following more
specific questions:
- How do Poles react to foreign-accented Polish?
What reactions do foreign learners experience?
- Which of the three aspects of Polish: grammar,
pronunciation or vocabulary, constitutes the
major learning difficulty to foreigners?
- Which aspects of Polish pronunciation are most
difficult for the learners?
- Which characteristics of foreign-accented Polish
are particularly striking to the Polish ear?
- What pedagogical implications does the
conducted study bring for teaching Polish as a
foreign language?
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Anna Najdecka : Semantic innovations in names of cosmetics
In the world of mass consumption, the need to name
many new phenomena and products as well as to
market them in an attractive form results in the fact
that marketing names are beginning to fulfil the
function of specific advertising messages. Senders of
such messages consciously use the knowledge on the
psychological and linguistic phenomenon of
synaesthesia, the power of word connotations and the
role of senses in the reception of persuasive texts. By
borrowing lexemes from other areas of life and
assigning new meanings to them, they use
synaesthetisation of the description in the vocabulary
layer of the message. This is how they want to reach
the “emotional” area of recipients brains and make
them decode the message in a polysensoric manner
and thus more permanently record the information
about the product in their memory. An example here
is a surprisingly large number of culinary lexemes
(over 20), which have been recently imported to
cosmetic vocabulary, such as: galaretka [jelly], koktajl
[coctail], mus [mousse], sorbet, nektar [nectar] or
kawior [caviar].
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Mariola Milusz : Intertextuality in press and television advertising
The author of this paper discusses the
infrequently raised issues of intertextuality in press
and television advertising. She points to the
intertextuality mechanisms employed most frequently
and cultural areas from which the modern
advertising draws (transformations of phraseological
units, including the ones belonging to the so-called
colloquial phraseology; travestations of fragments of
poems, prose and song lyrics; employment of
mythological and biblical topics; references to fairy
tale and legendary motifs; multi-plane allusions to
film and television works; references in which a given
advertisement becomes a hypertext for another
message). The author analyses the verbal and iconic
code exploited in the messages by indicating a
correlation between them. In this paper the
stylistically pragmatic analysis method is applied to
individual advertisements.
