Linguistic and Cultural Perceptions of Selected Occupations in Eighteenth-Century Proverbs (on the Basis of Nowy dykcjonarz by Michał Abraham Troc)
Linguistic and Cultural Perceptions of Selected Occupations in Eighteenth-Century Proverbs (on the Basis of Nowy dykcjonarz by Michał Abraham Troc)

Summary/Abstract: This paper is an attempt to show the possibilities offered by an analysis of a historical dictionary in researching the old ways of perceiving, categorizing and evaluating the world. The observations in question are based on proverbs extracted from Nowy dykcjonarz by Michał Abraham Troc, which is one of the most significant achievements of Polish lexicography of the eighteenth century. Using the methodology of linguistic worldview reconstruction, the authors present the ways of perceiving certain occupations (shoemakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, cooks, doctors, executioners) by people in the eighteenth century and provide the cultural context of these perceptions. The analysis demon­strates that language is not only a communication tool, but also a carrier of the collective experience and outlook on life.

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