PORADNIK JĘZYKOWY

ISSUE 7 / 2017

ARTICLES AND DISSERTATIONS

  • Marian Bugajski : On the traditions of prescriptive linguistics

    This paper is based on an overview. I indicate there the essential development stages of prescriptive linguistics and I substantiate the thesis that development of linguistics is conditioned on practical needs. The main purpose of the studies of language has been its protection since the old days. This gave rise to descriptive and prescriptive grammar, which – by codifying the standard – influenced language condition and development to a certain extent.

    In the Polish environment, language is clearly treated as a social good and attempts to ensure its correctness are combined with a fight for the homeland, with the emotional element strongly manifest. The love of language, the fight for correctness, and the fight with errors are notions which have a long tradition in Polish linguistics and which have been used to this date. Prescriptive linguistics defined as the theory of language culture was formed in the Polish reality and gained its scientific status in the second half of the 20th century.

  • Aleksander Kiklewicz : Language norm in functional grammar

    The subject of this paper is a language norm (a standard language) from the functional perspective. The author presents four points of view on the question of language norm: 1) acceptance; 2) statement; 3) depreciation; 4) assurance, represented in functional grammar. The author shows how the standard language is perceived by researchers of these four formations. A particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of norm liberalisation. The author proposes his own idea taking the “langue vs. parole” opposition into account. According to the author, the increase in the number of colloquial elements in public communication texts points to the hybrid nature of such discourses rather than to norm liberalisation.

  • Jolanta Piwowar : How we grind these days or a few comments on the sufficiency of the description of a lexical meaning in dictionaries of Polish

    Language is continuously changing, and so is i.a. the semantic scope of words. These changes concern also the basic lexical resource. Do the contemporary dictionaries of Polish keep up with the changes? The subject of this paper is a selected example of a description of a lexical norm codified in such dictionaries. The principal goal of this paper is to determine the significance of the specification level of the description of the lexical meaning of the units defined in dictionaries (e.g. mleć (to grind), mielony (ground)) for certain language users. It turns out that it is crucial for interpreting various legal acts and regulations. It influences i.a. the interpretation of tax regulations and, what follows, the amount of taxes to be paid by enterprises or their customers. The analysis uses the language material contained in Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego (National Corpus of Polish).

    This paper describes how the content of entries could affect the classification of goods and the VAT rate calculated on the goods – it describes the practical application of the lexical norm in a field that seems to be far from linguistics, namely industry and economy.

  • Jagoda Bloch : The content of dynamics in a dynamic news programme
    Non-verbal communication is an indispensable element of interpersonal communication. Non-verbal signals fulfil various important communication functions, including in particular: expressing emotions and controlling impressions. From among the numerous non-verbal communication channels, it is voice behaviours, especially intensity and pace of speech, that influence the impression the sender has on recipients most. Newsreaders and reporters deliver news in the first place but they also point to the exceptionality of their work by emphasising the importance of the message through dynamics. Recently, we have been observing the increased speed of reading news and the greater voice intensity in journalists’ utterances. This can have an adverse effect on prosody, disrupt expressiveness of speech: logical stressing, text segmentation, reading fluency, and intonation contour. This paper is dedicated to the presentation of the news programmes where the co-occurrence of increased power of the voice and changes in the reading expressiveness is noticeable.
  • Anna Wajda : Teaching and learning by reading in two languages
    This paper concerns one of the methods of teaching Polish as a foreign language, namely reading literary texts in Polish and in the learner’s first language. The simultaneous functioning of two language versions of such texts is placed in the foreground due to the fact that the subject is approached from the angle of autonomy in learning. Performing tasks on one’s own, with no help from the teacher, requires the student to adopt strategies that will enable them to increase the capabilities of understanding a text and memorising the words and structures contained there as much as possible. Teachers are supposed to motivate students to refer to the Polish literature on their own, indicate reading strategies, and help them select their readings. This paper provides teachers with the basic information with this respect.

POLISH GRAMMAR

REPORTS, NOTICES, POLEMICS

  • Józef Porayski-Pomsta : A report on the activities of Towarzystwo Kultury Języka (Society for Language Culture) in the period 2014–2016
  • Resolutions of the General Meeting of Towarzystwo Kultury Języka (Society for Language Culture) of 31 March 2017

REVIEWS

  • Stanisław Dubisz : Halina Zgółkowa, Słownictwo dzieci w wieku przedszkolnym w latach 2010–2015. Listy frekwencyjne (Vocabulary of pre-school children in the period 2010–2015. Frequency lists), Poznań 2016

EXPLANATIONS OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS