PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 1 / 2014

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • Anna Cegieła : What is hate speech?
    The expression hate speech should be replaced with a more precise term hate rhetoric or hate strategy. It comprises three types of linguistic behaviour: building an image of an individual or a group composed of discrediting and stigmatising characteristics that form a stereotype; reinforcing this image in a manner that creates the impression that the individual or the group poses a threat to an imaginary order, is its enemy (dehumanisation and demonisation of the image of the enemy), and – based on such a justification – arousing the sense of duty to discriminate, marginalise or eliminate it. Hate rhetoric is pursued from the position of people in power (not necessarily literally), its nature is substitutionary for acts of violence and constitutes infringement on the human right to equality and dignity.
  • Paweł Kuciński : Invented morality. The value system and nationalism
    In the proposed text, I am discussing the rightist radical instrumentalisation of the term “ethics”; I am contrasting the nationalist radical/invented ethics with the universal notion of ethics. This paper presents the path followed by the notions of good, evil and ethics itself in the Polish national radical discourse in the 1930s. From Zygmunt Balicki, to nationalist poems, the national word, and thus the notions of ethics, strive for radicalisation of meanings, the carriers of which is the ideology if radical nationalism, and in this sense they support politics rather than universal ethics, from which – as I am emphasising – they are stolen by the totalitarian entity. The word used for the purposes of political loyalty is not only a carrier of relative ethical values but also a method of hiding them, especially those which are contradictory to the “nationalist” ethics.
  • Agnieszka Budzyńska-Daca : Eristic and ethics
    The presented research proposition concerns the issue of ethics of eristic. Attention is given to the differences between the classical concept of eristic and the contemporary suggestions for its definition. Conditions of ethical participation in a dispute, based on the rhetoric ethos of the speaker, are formulated. Eristic communication behaviours are considered here unethical when the speaker does not assume responsibility for the changes caused by his or her utterance in a rhetoric situation, that is also when he or she participates in the dispute as an anonymous person. Attention is also drawn to the mechanism of penetrating eristic argumentation from individual disputes to the area of the so-called public debate. The attitude to eristic presented in the literature regarding legal rhetoric and an utterance of a politician about manners of participating in a dispute are demonstrated. The latter encourages the formulation of a postulate that responsibility for the word be one of significant categories for evaluating a politician.
  • Jakub Z. Lichański : Dependent symbols and rhetoric. Discussions on the margin of the logical and rhetorical analysis of expressions such as ethics of the word

    Expressions such ethics of the word belong, according to the theory of descriptions by Sir Bertrand Russell, to the so-called incomplete symbols. This does not change the fact that they are frequently used both in everyday language, which is not surprising, and in the language of science, which is a serious shortcoming. This discussion is an attempt to analyse this type of expressions in two ways and demonstrate the related difficulties. The basic ones involve the determination of designatum of expressions; yet equally serious difficulties are related to the fact that their elliptic nature causes semantic difficulties, and the trouble with the designatum makes the semantic scope of an expression unclear.

    However, one could ask whether such a conduct is appropriate if the intuitive understanding of such expressions causes no serious trouble. The author believes, however, that there are considerable difficulties in determining, among others, the semantic scope of expressions such as ethics of the word, methods of qualifying other expressions as, for instance, ones violating the principles set with phrases such as ethics of the word, etc., at the level of the so-called intuitive understanding. The general question is one about the applicability of the tools of the theory of rhetoric to solve the identified logical problems.

    This paper is an attempt to present a solution to the indicated problems.

  • Marzena Makuchowska : A foetus or a child? About linguistic establishment of the status of the human being
    The 20th-century linguistic turn resulted in such a perception of language that allowed seeing it not only as a tool for communicating reality but also as an instrument serving the purpose of creating its image. Therefore, it is assumed that the language practice (discourse) of various entities strives for establishing the meanings created thereby in the general awareness. What senses are popularised is considered by the so-called critical discourse analysis an issue that is not indifferent to the social life. This paper discusses the issue of determining the ontic status of the human foetus by diverse opposing and competing discourses, conventionally called antiabortion and pro-abortion. The former uses expressions with the word child, stressing that nasciturus (Lat. ‘to be born’) belongs to the category HUMAN BEING. The latter, in turn, advocates names such as foetus, abortion, termination of pregnancy, attributing the status of a child to a born person only; what also serves the purpose of reducing the ontic significance of nasciturus is various text strategies and, as a result, nasciturus is ranked lower than the human being in the so-called great chain of being.
  • Laura Polkowska : Violating parliamentary ethics in the period 2001–2012
    This sketch is an attempt to synthesise the parliamentary utterances that violate parliamentary ethics in the period 2001–2012, that is over the past four terms of office of the Sejm. Those utterances frequently included vocabulary from the semantic field of a lie and treachery, nouns which negatively evaluate the intellectual capacity of the person being their object, as well as words-labels, which are nearly devoid of their dictionary meanings and at the same time are characterised by as extensive negative connotation as possible. What also attracts attention is the increasingly more frequent colloquialisation and vulgarisation of the language of politics. This text also attempts to answer the question whether the Sejm Komisja Etyki Poselskiej (the Deputy Committee on Ethics) is capable of influencing the level of the contemporary political debate in Poland.
  • Milena Adaszek-Waliszczak : Dogs, wolves, geese, nutrias, that is... about animal lexis in the language of politics
    The paper titled Dogs, wolves, geese, nutrias, that is… about animal lexis in the language of politics is a text describing functions of animal lexis in the negative political communication. This paper is composed of a theoretical part including comments about insults and their types, the persuasive use of metaphor, or evaluation in political texts, and an analytical part, where selected 21st-century utterances of politicians are briefly discussed. Analyses of the lexical material unambiguously prove that animalisms used as political insults aim to attribute negative characteristics to an opponent, ridicule, dehumanise him or her, threaten recipients, and at times also create the need to eliminate the opponent. What emerges from the analysis of political insults is an anti-image of a politician, who is dangerous, deceitful, double-faced, intolerant, etc. In their utterances, senders negatively evaluate other politicians who pose a threat to them or do not acknowledge moral, social and cognitive values. Unfortunately, such an attitude of senders is only declarative, since the shape of the analysed utterances, their manipulative aggressive nature clearly indicate that the senders themselves display many of the characteristics which should, according to them, be discrediting for a politician.
  • Krzysztof Kaszewski : What does an unsatisfi ed customer write about the seller? An analysis of negative comments in the Allegro.pl website

    In this paper, I am analysing negative comments of users of Allegro.pl – the largest Polish auction website. The examination aimed to identify the linguistic devices used by unsatisfied customers towards the seller and the degree to which their utterances satisfied politeness requirements. Ca. 450 negative comments were analysed.

    The analyses proved that purchasers often write about the seller, about his or her characteristics or behaviour. The majority of Allegro users observe elementary etiquette principles but impolite behaviours are not infrequent, either: powerful, negative evaluations of the seller or his or her actions, or attributing him or her negative characteristics. Polite weakening of judgement is rare, while reinforcing and radicalising negative evaluations is more often the case.

OLD AND CONTEMPORARY DICTIONARIES

REPORTS, NOTICES, POLEMICS

  • Przemysław Wiatrowski : A report from the 3rd Polish Nationwide Academic Conference in the series “Culture of language communication” titled “Language culture in professional communication”, Będlewo, 13–14 May 2013
  • Michał Sobczak : The Bydgoszcz dialogue in culture

EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

  • Marcin Zabawa : Klucz (key), skórka (skin), recenzja (review), wsparcie (support) – the most recent semantic Anglicisms in Polish

BIOGRAPHICAL ENTRIES AND MEMOIRS

  • Stanisław Dubisz : Lexicographic propositions by Professor Mieczysław Szymczak (on the 40th anniversary of the edition of Słownik gwary Domaniewka… (Dictionary of the dialect in Domaniewek…))