Od dystansu do poufałości. Formuły powitalne listów elektronicznych kierowanych przez nauczycieli do rodziców

From Formality to Familiarity: Greeting Formulas in Emails Written by Teachers to ParentsThe purpose of the article is the analysis of greeting formulas in emails written by teachers to parents. The linguistic material is based on 513 email messages sent to parents by means of an online parent portal (e-dziennik). The messages in question were sent by teachers representing a number of schools in Lesser Poland Province. The formal relationship between the participants of the communication and the written form of the exchanges clearly pertains to the traditional formality of the situation; as a result, expectations are raised in terms of the official style of utterances produced under these circumstances. The analysis of the obtained material indicates that greeting formulas used in emails diverge significantly from those used in official paper-based correspondence. Traditional formulas such as Szanowni Państwo (Dear Sir/Madame, Dear Sirs) are clearly replaced by formulas originating from direct verbal communication (Dzień dobry, Witam). There is an apparent tendency to become familiar with recipients by using emoticons or the language formulas present in private correspondence between people who have a close relationship. In addition to the lack of text segmentation, the overall linguistic layout and spelling strategies that prevail in both greeting formulas and the entire body of letters indicate a negligent attitude in terms of text layout. Od dystansu do poufałości. Formuły powitalne listów elektronicznych kierowanych przez nauczycieli do rodzicówCelem artykułu jest analiza formuł powitalnych w listach elektronicznych nauczycieli do rodziców. Bazę materiałową stanowi 513 e-maili kierowanych przez nauczycieli wybranych szkół w południowej Polsce do rodziców za pośrednictwem dzienników elektronicznych. Formalny typ relacji między uczestnikami komunikacji oraz pisemna forma komunikatu stanowią tradycyjnie jaskrawy wykładnik oficjalności sytuacji i – co za tym idzie – powodują oczekiwanie oficjalnego stylu komunikatu powstającego w takiej sytuacji. Analiza materiału pokazuje, że formuły inicjalne listów elektronicznych znacząco odbiegają od grzecznościowych form powitalnych stosowanych w oficjalnej korespondencji papierowej. Nad tradycyjnym Szanowni Państwo wyraźnie dominują formuły zaczerpnięte z bezpośredniej komunikacji ustnej (Dzień dobry, Witam). Daje się zauważyć skłonność do przełamywania dystansu w postaci stosowania zwrotów do adresata, charakterystycznych dla korespondencji prywatnej między osobami będącymi w bliskiej relacji uczuciowej czy używania emotikonów. Kształt językowy i ortograficzny znacznej części formuł inicjalnych (ale i całości listów) oraz brak segmentacji tekstów świadczą o braku dbałości o graficzną stronę wiadomości.

Jan Zamojski as a Representative of the Belz Voivodeship at the Warsaw Convocation Sejm in 1573

The main purpose of the article is to study the position of Jan Zamojski as the sole ambassador of the Belz Voivodeship at the Warsaw Convocation Sejm in 1573. Such work will provide a better understanding of the sejm activities of the nobility of the Belz land in the late 16th century. The methodological basis of the article is the general scientific methods of critical analysis and synthesis. Among the special historical methods can be distinguished historical-comparative and problematic-chronological approaches. Legislative achievements of the pre-convocation sejms of Belz, Kalisz, Krakow, Poznan and Sandomierz voivodeship, resolutions of the Warsaw Convocation Sejm in 1573 and private correspondence of Jan Zamoyski in this period were used as a source base. Comparing the provisions of the instructions of the Belz pre-convocation sejm with the proposals of Wielkopolska and Malopolska ambassadors, as well as analysing Zamoyski’s letters at this time, we came to the conclusion that the views of the Ukrainian voivodeship largely coincided with those of Wielkopolska and Malopolska. In particular, in the instructions adopted in Belz, Wisla and Schröd, we come across mentions of necessity to agree on the time, place of election and form of participation of the nobility in this process, as well as to determine the principles of domestic and foreign policy for the interregnum. In addition, the Belgian ambassador Zamoysky in a letter to the provincial officer of the Ruthenian voivodeship Yakub Herburt put forward the idea of a common Sejm for all Ukrainian lands. In part, such statements can be interpreted as a rhetorical tool that helped Zamoyski achieve the main political goal at the time — to expand the circle of his supporters in different regions of the Commonwealth.

‘The troubles of collecting’: William Henry Harvey and the practicalities of natural-history collecting in Britain's nineteenth-century world

In recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the logistical challenges and difficulties encountered by those responsible for the collection, preservation and safe transport of specimens from the field to the museum or laboratory. This article builds on this trend by looking beyond apparent successes to consider the practices and practicalities of shipboard travel and maritime and coastal collecting activities. The discussion focuses on the example of William Henry Harvey, who travelled to Australia in pursuit of cryptogams – non-flowering plants like mosses, lichens and algae – in 1853. In his private correspondence to family and friends, Harvey offered insights into the challenges and obstacles faced by all collectors in the period. His experiences were fundamentally shaped by the material culture, embodied knowledge and physical constraints he encountered on the way. On one level, shipboard and onshore collecting activities were facilitated by the connections forged by new technologies and Britain's global empire. But they also depended on specific contexts and relied on local agents and actors, as well as on the physical and technical facilities (and limitations) of those doing the collecting. The examples of Harvey and others shed light on the real, ‘lived’ experiences of individual collectors, the difficulties and challenges they encountered in amassing their collections, and the networks of people on which they relied.

Intensifiers in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Individual Style: Semantics of Irregular Lexical Combinations

The paper is dedicated to the analysis of irregular intensifying constructions in Fyodor Dostoevskys individual style, more specifically of irregular lexical combinations including an intensifier and a main word. The meaning of intensifies is completely focused on expressing the intensity of an attribute, action or state denominated by the main word. Fyodor Dostoevskys writing style tends to form certain types of irregular lexical combinations including intensifiers. Through a case study of intensifiers ochen , goryachii / goryacho , izo vsekh sil , etc. the article describes several main types of irregular combinations with the view to find out semantic effects of irregular combinability. The analysis has covered the complete corpus of Fyodor Doestoevskys texts (fiction, journalism, private correspondence, business correspondence and documents). The first discriminant mark of irregular combinations is the semantic contradiction between the terms, the violation of idiomatic compatibility rules is the second feature taken into account. Whereas collocational rules in modern Russian differ a lot from the language norms of the 19th century, the subcorpus of 19th century texts of the National Russian Corpus serves to test the irregular idiomatic combinability. The article shows how the irregular combinability causes context meaning shifts profiling peripheral semantic features of the main word or imposing on it an untypical and contradictory semantics. In irregular lexical combinations, the language representation changes due to the original authors reinterpretation of the referential situation. The irregular lexical combinations with intensifiers are thereafter a distinctive feature of Fyodor Dostoevskys individual writing style that reveals his original conceptualization of the world.

Narrative and Polemic Aspects of Epistolary Communication in Ukraine of the Late 16th – Early 17th Century

The article analyses epistles as a form of communication in the framework of Ukrainian publicism in the late 16th – early 17th century, which is characterized by the interaction of various polemical forms of expression and their influence on the recipient. It is noted that epistolary texts were among the most popular forms at that time, and their role was strengthened with the proclamation of the Union of Brest (1596). Being able to promptly convey information, along with the development of methods for active polemicization, they came to be established as a means of communication, so epistolary works provided the opportunity to express ideas and, through various forms, convey information about important social and political problems to the addressees (listeners, recipients). Due to this feature, they increased the author’s influence on the readers. Private correspondence, which had the status of political documents at that time, is distinguished as a special category as it mainly expressed the viewpoints of representatives of different religious denominations. The exchange of letters between the persons involved in the Brest Union intensified considerably. It is emphasized that because of certain genre features epistolary works of that time could be viewed as open letters/epistles. Such a genre form was also popular in Western European Protestant publicism of the 17thcentury. The article considers the narrative and polemical aspects of epistolary texts, using examples from correspondence by Ipatii Potii, Kliryk Ostrozkyi and Ivan Vyshenskyi.

Michael Harmel (1915-1974): A South African Communist and His Discourse

<p>This thesis explores the life and work of a South African journalist, editor, and activist Michael Alan Harmel (1915–1974), a political mentor and friend of Nelson Mandela. A resolute believer in racial equality and Marxism-Leninism, Harmel devoted his life to fighting, with “the pen” as well as “the sword”, segregation and apartheid, and promoting an alliance of communists with the African National Congress as a stepping stone to socialism in South Africa. Part 1, after tracing his Jewish-Lithuanian and Irish family roots, follows Harmel from his birth to 1940 when, having joined the Communist Party of South Africa, he got married and was elected secretary of the District Committee in Johannesburg. The focus is on factors germane to the formation of his political identity. The narrative section is accompanied by an analytical sketch. This, using tools of close literary interpretation, catalogues Harmel’s core beliefs as they inscribed themselves in his journalism, histories, a sci-fi novel, party memoranda, and private correspondence. The objective is to delineate his ideological outlook, put to the test the assessment of Harmel—undeniably a skilled publicist—as a “creative thinker” and “theorist”, and determine his actual contribution to the liberation discourse.</p>

Michael Harmel (1915-1974): A South African Communist and His Discourse

<p>This thesis explores the life and work of a South African journalist, editor, and activist Michael Alan Harmel (1915–1974), a political mentor and friend of Nelson Mandela. A resolute believer in racial equality and Marxism-Leninism, Harmel devoted his life to fighting, with “the pen” as well as “the sword”, segregation and apartheid, and promoting an alliance of communists with the African National Congress as a stepping stone to socialism in South Africa. Part 1, after tracing his Jewish-Lithuanian and Irish family roots, follows Harmel from his birth to 1940 when, having joined the Communist Party of South Africa, he got married and was elected secretary of the District Committee in Johannesburg. The focus is on factors germane to the formation of his political identity. The narrative section is accompanied by an analytical sketch. This, using tools of close literary interpretation, catalogues Harmel’s core beliefs as they inscribed themselves in his journalism, histories, a sci-fi novel, party memoranda, and private correspondence. The objective is to delineate his ideological outlook, put to the test the assessment of Harmel—undeniably a skilled publicist—as a “creative thinker” and “theorist”, and determine his actual contribution to the liberation discourse.</p>

O pewnym sposobie użycia form deminutywnych w języku rosyjskim XVII – początku XVIII wieku

On a certain way of using diminutive forms in 17th – early 18th century Russian. The author discusses suffixal appellative diminutive personal nouns which appeared in the etiquette formulations of Russian private correspondence dating from the 17th – early 18th century. The definition of the diminutives has been presented, with particular attention paid to the modification of the meaning of derivatives by isolating the suffixes in their structure. The same diminutive, when used to describe people, can have both a hypocoristic and a contemptuous meaning. Hypocoristic names, as a rule, define the recipient and his/her family members, while the contemptuous names describe the sender and their relatives. The most common suffixes are: -ка/-ко, -ок/-ек, -ишка/-ишко, -ушка/-ушко, -ошка, -онка, -ец, -ица. The history of the type of derivatives with the suffix -ишк- is particularly interesting. Keywords: diminutive noun, hypocoristic noun, suffix, derivative, appellative noun, epistolary etiquette, private correspondence

A Simple guide to complex world of overtone and combination bands: Theoretical simulation and interpretation of NIR spectra – summary of the workshop at NIR-2021 Beijing Conference

Between 18 and 21 October 2021, the 20th International Conference on NIR spectroscopy in Beijing took place. Despite this time being held as a virtual event, it was a highly successful symposium met with high interest from the wide audience – as evidenced by many excellent presentations, around which numerous vivid discussions developed. During the conference, four workshops were offered, focused at discussing few areas essential for NIR spectroscopy and its applications. Excellent workshops were provided by Professors Heinz Siesler, Hui Yan, Dolores Pérez-Marín and Tom Fearn, in which invaluable knowledge was shared with the participants of the conference. Among these renowned experts, I had the honour to offer my contribution with the workshop aimed at the physicochemical foundations of NIR spectroscopy, an area that seldom is exhaustively presented in the textbooks. The workshop aimed at shedding light on the complex world of overtone and combination bands and was met with a considerable interest from the participants. As many questions have been asked both during the dedicated Q&A session, as well as through other channels and private correspondence, I would like to provide a short recapitulation of the workshop in the form of this brief article. Some of the most essential ‘take home messages’, such as the origin of the intensity variation of the overtone bands and the famous ‘selection rule’ of the harmonic oscillator, among others will be briefly outlined here.

FROM A PRIVATE LETTER TO AN ARTISTIC IMAGE: BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF «LETTERS TO AUNTIE» BY M.E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Статья посвящена составлению цикла «Письма к тетеньке» М.Е. Салтыкова-Щедрина и частной переписки писателя начала 1880-х гг. Эпистолярное наследие писателя рассматривается как теоретическая мастерская, в которой факт действительности преображается и становится основой для художественного образа The article is about M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s creating of a series of works «Letters to Auntie» and his private correspondence in the beginning of the 1880s. The epistolary heritage of the writer is considered as a theoretical workshop in which the fact of reality is being transformed and becomes the foundation for an artistic image.