JĘZYKOWE PERFORMATYWNE INSYGNIA WŁADZY
PERFORMATIVE VERBAL FORMULAE AS THE AUTHORITY INSIGNIA

Summary/Abstract: In our times, if one speaks about authority or power insignia and rituals, one usually thinks about visual signs, gestures or behavior, no matter how durable or ephemeral they are. Nevertheless, the verbal behavior, the verbal formula in fact, still remain the principal determinants of political power, as it was centuries ago, and they continue having their character of both ritual and insignia. Among many types of verbal formulae, our attention is focused on those, which present a performative function in the act of speech: they create (or modify) a given factual state of affair, a fragment of reality. They act not only through the principal verbal communication code (speech), but also through its written sub-code. It seems obvious that the linguistic insignia of authority and power have always been destined particularly for social (maybe also political) elites, for the upper classes; the visual insignia, as easier to communicate, were rather (and still are) intended for being communicated to the wide popular (lower) classes. The primacy of language, however, appears also in the fact that the majority of visual signs (and symbols) require a sort of linguistically expressed convention (rules of interpretation), but the verbal formulae do not need any illustration.

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