scholarly journals “Fat Cats on Golden Parachutes” – about an Idiom Derived from the Language of Politics and its Modifications

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-116
Author(s):  
Dorota Połowniak-Wawrzonek ◽  
Agnieszka Rosińska-Mamej

Due to the influence of the language of politics, the noun phrase, tłuste koty, has become established in modern Polish language. As the research material proves, the idiom fat cats has a negative connotation in the Polish language. Most often, it refers to rich people associated with business, as well as politicians and people in power, such as legislative, executive and judicial. The analysed texts provide many modifications of the expression under analysis, e.g., wypasione pisowskie tłuste koty, tłuste koty w sutannach, tłuste koty nadziane ośmiorniczkami, tłuste koty na złotych spadochronach, lejące krokodyle łzy podczas ucieczki z pogromu kociego na Wall Street, najtłustszy i wredny kot, okrąglutki, milutki, taki kotek tłuściutki. The most important function of modification is to express a critical opinion about people in the category of fatty cats. Through modifications, it is emphasized that the earnings of fatty cats are indecently high, often unreasonable and undeserved. Sharp social opposition causes financiers and politicians to avoid being responsible for their mistakes, for dishonesty. Fat cats are also accused of greed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-137
Author(s):  
Nawoja Mikołajczak-Matyja Mikołajczak-Matyja

The paper considers the relation of semantic opposition in terms of the prototype theory of concepts. Its purpose is to provide information on peripheral or border areas of the category of semantic opposition. Data from linguistic analyzes, as well as the results of contemporary corpus studies, indicate that pairs of co-hyponyms from multi-element sets are potentially relevant material in peripheral areas of the category of semantic opposition. A psycholinguistic study was conducted to verify the psychological reality of the data. 720 Polish language users were instructed to provide semantic oppositions to the list of 24 stimuli words (test of directed associations). The research material was Polish nouns belonging to 3 lexical fields: animals, plants and artifacts, with no obvious semantic oppositions (as bee, cabbage, vase). It turned out that, according to the hypothesis, proportions of reactions classified as co-hyponyms of stimuli are high: for 21 stimuli it was 52–94% of the response corpora and for 22 stimuli the dominant reaction was co-hyponym of the stimulus word (as cabbage-lettuce, bee-wasp, vase-flowerpot). The characteristics that determine the choice of a given co-hyponym as the semantic opposite of the stimulus were identified. The remainder of the response corpus was analyzed in order to reveal other ways and mechanisms for seeking the semantic opposition by respondents. The data obtained in the presented study confirm the necessity to incorporate the problem of co-hyponymic pairs from multi-element sets into reflections on the category of the semantic opposition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Ałła Krawczyk

The aim of the article is to show some deviations from the Polish nationwide rules in selected polite expressions in the written text on a large amount of research material (over two thousand units), extracted from almost half a thousand issues of Polonia newspapers, published in Ukraine in the 21st century. What is analysed are some peculiarities of the structure of these units against the background of their pragmatic Polish nationwide equivalents, their functions in the press text of the inherited Polish language, and the communication capabilities both within and without the studied communicative community. The influence of Ukrainian polite expressions on the studied expressions of inherited Polish language is evaluated. The research results give rise to a reflection on the issue of differential acceptability — against the background of the general standard — of the features of the linguistic label in the inherited Polish language in Ukraine.


Author(s):  
Dorota Karkut

The subject of the articleis to discuss the problem of reading poetry in the changing educational reality. As research material, I used the statements made by students on how to work with poetica Texas Turing Polish language lessons in secondary school as well as testimonies of the reception of the works of Jan Kochanowski and Ignacy Krasicki, taking into account the experiences of contemporary teenagers, collected in questionnaires. 


Author(s):  
Jana Raclavská

The article presents the part of the research material based on Silesian language from the Cieszyn area. The author analyses works written by Cieszyn protestant secondary grammar school students which have preserved in archives of Tschammer´s Library. The manuscripts which were studied date back to turn of the eighteenth century. The research proved that spoken language in Cieszyn differ from the common Polish language of that time in every level of language.


Język Polski ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-117
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Cierpich-Kozieł

The article focuses on the Anglicism "koronawirus" in the Polish language. Its principal aim was to excerpt the compound nouns with the productive stem "korona-", to discuss their status, and to group them into semantic fields. Among such neologisms, numerous hybrid creations, a few pseudoanglicisms, as well as one loanword were found. They can be grouped into at least 11 semantic fields referring to socioeconomic, political and cultural reality in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the Polish adjective "koronawirusowy" is discussed. As a constituent of a Polish noun phrase, it usually complies with the English sentence structure. Also, basic comparative research on the productivity of the stem "korona-", and its foreign language counterparts in Polish, English and German was conducted.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (23) ◽  
pp. 167-182
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Czarnecka

The work relates to the creation of Saint George – a dragon slayer emerging from the selection of texts published in the Polish language since the beginning of the 20th century. Analytical considerations are preceded by an outline of the history of the hagiographic message about Saint George, taking into account symbolic functioning of this character in various areas of culture. Works differentiated in genological terms and taken from various sources (classical literature, folklore texts, poetic songs) were selected as the research material. Saint George’s creation was characterized in four ways: 1. A pious knight, 2. A dragon slayer, 3. A character from artistic concepts, 4. A hero deprived of his legend. The article is finalized by conclusions regarding the differentiation of the plot, the way of taking into account the religious element (from the paraenetic pattern to desacralization), and literary references to visual arts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 289-306
Author(s):  
Aneta Wysocka

A few innovative ways of speaking about homo-animal relationships by contemporary animal loversThe study concerns the communication habits of animal lovers, considered against the background of the linguistic picture of the world, which is generally anthropocentric. The research material are comments posted on hobby websites. The analyses allowed the author to observe the active, reflective and critical attitude of many representatives of the community towards linguistic conventions. Its members attempt a dialogue with the tradition by using innovative expressions of people in relation to animals and animals in relation to people, new ways on naming the process of teaching the animal, as well as its death. However, the texts that speak of the latter case revealed the same need, which had a profound impact on the image of living beings in general Polish language — the imperative to distinguish between what is considered to be specifically human and that which is common throughout nature.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Laura Brazaitienė

The goal of the article is to discuss the change of the subdialects of the surrounding area of Kaunas belonging to the territory of Kaunas district. The manuscripts of the second half of the 20th century and the printed texts of these subdialects and audio recordings served as research material.   The situation of subdialects in the Kaunas area is revealed by the analysis in different periods by the differentiating (the pronunciation of the consonant l, accented long and accented short vowels, stress retraction) and their characteristic (the pronunciation of unaccented inflexional vowels ė and o) dialectal features recorded in the manuscripts.It was found that the western part of the dialect area was more homogeneous in all classifications: the consonant lwas usually not hardened, cases of stress retraction were few, and the unaccented long vowels were seldom shortened. In the eastern part, the inhabitants of both speakers of the traditional Lithuanian subdialect and the local Polish language tended to retract the stress, shorten the unaccented long vowels, and prolong the accented short vowels. The influence of the local Polish language is thought to be explained by some other cases recorded in this part of the subdialect area. 


LingVaria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2(32)) ◽  
pp. 47-59
Author(s):  
Ewa Młynarczyk

Phrasematic Potential of the Word Combination: bieda z nędzą in Contemporary Polish The combination of synonymous words, whose origin may be associated with folk demonology and personified notions of Bieda [Poverty] and Nędza [Misery], has become the basis for a few phrasemes that are authenticated in contemporary Polish language. The analysis of research material that includes a variety of texts, differing in terms of topic, genre and style, is the evidence that apart from the phraseme bieda z nędzą, which is registered in dictionaries, also other multi-verbal units, whose basic element of composition is this particular word combination, are used in Polish. The primary significance of the analysed phrasemes results from the presence of two synonymous words denoting a difficult financial situation, which leads to the hyperbolisation of the phenomenon. From the pragmatic perspective, however, they are used mostly as negative evaluation units, referring to the material sphere, but also to various fields, phenomena and events, which, according to the speaker, are characterised by low quality, have visible shortages and symptoms of poverty, or result from negligence or bad taste. As expressively and axiologically marked terms, which are characteristic of the colloquial style, these phrasemes are encountered in comments and discussion forums, as well as media coverage, especially in headlines. Longer phrasemes, which are joined by a clear rhyme, are the elements of intertextual games in various cultural texts: artistic works, blogs and chrematonyms.


2020 ◽  
pp. 111-127
Author(s):  
Adam Łuczyński

The aim of the article is to present older people's opinions on the contemporary Polish language and the changes occurring in it. The research material comes from a survey conducted in a group of 43 people aged 57 to 83. Older people show a keen interest in what is happening in today's Polish. This is confirmed by the results of the questionnaire as well as by the willing participation of respondents in the survey. Seniors react vividly to current phenomena taking place in the language. They are able to indicate them, evaluate and offer comments on them.


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