PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 4 / 2013

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • 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?
  • 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].
  • 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.

OLD AND CONTEMPORARY DICTIONARIES

  • Ewelina Kwapień : Słownik prasłowiański, ed. Franciszek Sławski, Wrocław 1974–2001

REPORTS, NOTICES, POLEMICS

  • Joanna Szerszunowicz : A report from international academic conferences: “II Congresso International de Fraseologia e Paremiologia”; “I Congresso Brasileiro de Fraseologia” 13–17 November 2011, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasil

REVIEWS

  • Milena Wojtyńska-Nowotka : Odkrywanie znaczeń w języku, academic editors Agnieszka Mikołajczuk and Krystyna Waszakowa, Warsaw 2012
  • Ewelina Tyc : Język w mediach. Antologia, academic editors Małgorzata Kita and Iwona Loewe, Katowice 2012

EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

WORDS AND PHRASES