Metaforyczność paratekstu w edycji źródeł polskiego prawa w Wywodzie historyczno-krytycznym... Antoniego Zygmunta Helcla
Metaphoricity of paratext in the edition of Polish law sources in Wywód historyczno-krytyczny… by Antoni Zygmunt Helcel

Author(s): Iwona Pałucka-Czerniak
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Historical Linguistics, Comparative Linguistics, Politics and law
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: para-text; metaphor; history of the Polish language; history of law; sources for the history of law in Poland
Summary/Abstract: The observation of scientific texts from the nineteenth century, devoted to the history of Poland and the Polish language, presents a tendency to use various manners of rhetorical provenance to create a message with a specific cognitive value, persuasive power and axiological character. Interest in this phenomenon is related to reflection on the scientific language of history and the paradigm of cognitive objectivity as well as the concept of linguistic distance. The use of various figurative transformations: metaphors, metonymies, hyperbolas, comparisons and metaphorical epithets in the works of historians in the 19th century turns out to be particularly puzzling. The publication of “Starodawnych prawa polskiego pomników” (from 1865, 1870) by Antoni Zygmunt Helcel was used as illustrative material. The legal historian expressed the content related to the discipline of knowledge he practiced, the research material as well as the methods and cognitive strategy of the researcher with suggestive, expressive tropes. They are proof of the erudition of the author who knows how to use the rich resource of elocutionary linguistic procedures. They also testify to the manner of expressing content adopted in a particular communicative community. The exploitation of tropes in a 19th-century scientific text does not contradict the postulated logic of inference and research intuition. As a result, an image of the nineteenth-century scientific discourse in the history of law is created in which the author does not avoid expressing his views clearly, unambiguous and expressive criticism, pictorial presentation of concepts and problems, and metaphorical determination of historiosophical foundations and historical ideas. At the same time, he declares and adopts the attitude of impartiality and objectivity.

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