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Józef Porayski-Pomsta : Towarzystwo Kultury Języka (Society for Language Culture) – on the fi ftieth anniversary of its establishment
This paper describes the history as well as goals
and objectives of Towarzystwo Kultury Języka (Society
for Language Culture), a scientific association
established by Prof. Witold Doroszewski in 1966. The
author presents the main directions pursued by the
Society, its organisational structure and selected
achievements over fifty years of its activity.
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Stanisław Dubisz : „Poradnik Językowy” (“The Linguistic Guide”) in the service of language culture
- Poradnik Językowy (The Linguistic Guide)
was
initiated in Kraków in 1901 as a periodical dedicated to
proper language use and linguistic guidance. After it
was moved to Warsaw in 1932, its profile changed into
a scientific journal, yet its role as a Polish nationwide
periodical discussing issues related to language culture
was preserved. Since 1971, Poradnik Językowy has
been a body of Towarzystwo Kultury Języka (Society
for Language Culture). Its two major roles, which have
evolved as a result of more than a hundred years of
the journal’s development, are: 1) forming a linguistic
standard of Polish and good – compliant with language
culture and ethics of the word – practices of social
communication; 2) forming the knowledge of the Polish
language, without which language culture is
impossible.-
Andrzej Markowski : Language policy and language culture
This paper discusses the relation between
language policy and language culture – two
fundamental notions in prescriptive linguistics. Both
terms and their contents can be understood differently
(as manifest in their definitions). It turns out that
particularly the concept behind language policy has
various meanings and the contents it encompasses
can be classified into 6 groups. Depending on the
adopted definitions, both analysed notions can even be
– in extreme cases – equated or understood as
separate. Most commonly, language policy, defined
as a set of various planned and coordinated actions
related to the language system and/or language
awareness of users, is situated as a part of language
culture – within its functional meaning.
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Jadwiga Puzynina : Language culture and ethics of the word
The relations between language culture and ethics
of the word go beyond the problems of strictly
linguistic communication today as they encompass
also the issues of communicating with paralinguistic
and pictorial means. All this does not fit into language
culture and therefore the problem of its superiority
over ethics of the word is ambiguous. The works
performed by Zespół Etyki Słowa (Team for Ethics of
the Word) by Rada Języka Polskiego (Council for the
Polish Language) are devoted to what needs to be
improved in the Polish culture despite acute conflicts
between politicians, which are carried over to the
media and interpersonal relationships. What is still
optimistic – despite the difficulties – is that there are
many people (both adults and students) who feel
attached to the notion of common good and thinking of
social obligations of a human being.
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Tadeusz Zgółka : Rhetoric and language culture
This sketch is dedicated to considering the
relation between classical rhetoric and language
culture. The latter is understood as oriented
exclusively (or mainly) towards categories of proper
language use, norms of language use, and criteria
determining such norms. Deviations from the norms
and violation of the criteria are frequently considered
a (phonetic, grammatical, lexical, etc.) language error.
The author demonstrates the convergence between
language culture and classical rhetoric, where proper
language use (Latinitas or Hellenismós) is one – yet not
the only (along with appropriateness, clarity,
ornateness) – criterion for evaluating the value of
utterances/statements. Hence the final thesis: the
word rhetoric is a hypernym of language culture.
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Wanda Decyk-Zięba,
Monika Kresa : (Im)proper language use in grammars books of Polish from the Age of Enlightenment
The object of the analysis is forms considered
incorrect, non-standard, yet included and discussed
in Enlightenment grammar books of Polish by: Walenty
Szylarski (1770), Michał Dudziński (1776), and Onufry
Kopczyński (1778-1781, 1817), and in a book on
the Polish language by Stanisław Kleczewski (1767).
The issues of proper language use touched upon by
the authors in the abovementioned works refer to
various problems: spelling, pronunciation, inflection,
word structures and appropriateness, syntactic
connectivity, and utterance/statement clarity. The
object of the evaluation is (general Polish and regional
– borderland) forms which, in the authors’ opinion,
violated the norms of general familiarity, semantic
expressiveness, and stylistic dignity. The grammarians
approve of the borrowings which entered the Polish
language long ago. Each of the discussed works is
another link in the debate on the Polish language,
linguistic habit, and norms of language use.
