Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część II. Prawość i odwaga
Polish value terms in comparative perspective. II. Prawość and odwaga

Summary/Abstract: The first part of Anna Wierzbicka’s comparative work on Polish value terms appeared in volume 23 of Etnolingwistyka: it dealt with dobroć ‘goodness’. In this second part, the author analyzes the concepts prawość ‘rightenousness’ and odwaga ‘courage’. Prawość is a specifically Polish concept, very much present in the Polish linguistic and cultural contemporary sphere. It is connected with the history of the country and the qualities attributed to major historical figures. Being prawy means being sensitive to others and following high ethical standards, which perhaps derives from the knightly ethos. English pseudo-equivalents of the Polish prawy/prawość are the words upright, righteous/righteousness and integrity. However, the word upright is now perceived by native speakers of English as dated and inadequate in contemporary world; righteous and righteousness have clear biblical connocations and have entered the English language through Puritan morality – hence their range is limited. The closest equivalent is integrity, although the word is more readily connected with one’s social activity than with morality. Odwaga is also connected with moral choices (cf. odwaga cywilna ‘moral courage’) but is not the same as courage: if someone is odważny, the deed may have negative consequences for the doer, which courage does not presuppose. The same semantic field contains words like śmiałość, dzielność and męstwo ‘boldness, bravery, valour’, but these also differ in their semantics from the English courage. Bravery is only an approximate to śmiałość, as is the Russian mužestvo, which merely resembles męstwo. The cognitive scripts of the Polish value terms show clearly that speakers of Polish in each case operate with elements of awareness („being aware of the moral obligation to act as one should”).

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