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In his works, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Zhvanetskiĭ frequently uses language play on the morphological level. It serves comic, expressive, and evaluative functions, simultaneously being a manifestation of authorial individualism. The object of this study is neosemanticisms and authorial neologisms. These linguistic innovations have been created by means of prefixes, prefixes and suffixes, reduction, compounding, substantivization, and contamination; some neologisms are mixed types. The unique expressiveness and vividness of the authorial neologisms based on the contrast with the base of the word allow him to play with meanings and consequently, achieve comic effects.
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Talent and genius are special kinds of human capabilities. The following article presents the linguistic picture of talent and genius based on selected metaphors in the Polish and Russian languages. The examples for analysis were excerpted from literary works, national corpora of Polish and Russian, and websites. The metaphors of talent are found to be more varied. Among the metaphors of genius, spatial metaphors oriented „upward” prevail. When comparing Polish and Russian metaphors of talent and genius, more similarities than differences are noticed, unlike in the non-metaphorical constructions.
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The article concerns the archival documents prepared in the Russian language in Poland within the territory of the city of Łódź during 1910—1914. The source material is the birth certificates made in St. Ann’s Parish. The object of analysis is apellatives naming persons on account of their occupations. These include both suffix derivatives and morphologically unmotivated nouns, for instance закройщик, музык(ант), писарь, торговец, and сторож. Compounds such as электротехник and terms such as прядильный мастер occur rather seldom. Occasionally, the function of an occupational title is played by substantivized adjectives and participles, for instance пожарный, портной, and торгующий. The names of persons discussed in this article are semantically diversified and characterize, with more or less accuracy, persons on account of their occupation, trade, specific field of trade, specialization, performed function, etc. As a general rule, these appellatives pertain to fathers registering births of their children. Since these documents have been written out in longhand by Poles in the foreign language, many of the analyzed forms turn out to be only the phonetic equivalents of Polish words or the inventions of their authors. Lack of experience or bad language habits rooted in the authors’ memory translate into numerous spelling mistakes.
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The object of studies presented in the following article is the Ukrainian names of soccer clubs in Galicja in the first half of the 20th century and the motivation behind these names. The complex structure of names of sports organizations, which are compounds of an abbreviation with a proper noun (for instance a toponym, hydronym, anthroponym) or a common noun, was analyzed. Attention was drawn to the fact that the names of most soccer clubs in Galicja contained references to historical, cultural or social realities important for Ukrainians.
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The object of analysis is familial terms used in the function of forms of address. The factual material comes from Polish novels of manners and their Russian translations. The study demonstrates that the familial terms are most frequently diminutives, which are indicative of a positive attitude of the speaker toward the addressee of an utterance.
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The purpose of my paper, signaled in the title, is a description of the phenomenon of deixis in the perspective of critical discourse analysis, in particular: a) the function it serves in the socrealistic propaganda transmission; b) its text-creating role respect to ideological, rhetorical (totalitarian) actio and presenting its role for the normative rules of presentation, which are imputed in it or imposed by it. In other words, deixis should be understood broadly, not only as a kind of transitive morphological units of expression (Lyons), but as a kind of “skeleton” of Stalinist / socrealistic semiosis. Deixis is a kind of rhetorical grip, its specificity includes the performative act of founding, among others, structure of the discursive “We” (pluralis sovieticae, collective, communist community), which allows the application of socialist habitus in the anthropological sphere, using variously targeted forms of the message (whereas deontic modality, accompanying it, and position of discursive Agens, or administratory rules of communication at that homophonic system are hidden). I base my rhetorical analysis on various texts of Stalin era, texts that form a hierarchical system of cross-dependence (allegations like: Stalin-Bie¬rut- “committed journalism”), leading from ideological arche-text in which invariants are formulated, through the form of translation of that set ideologems of a political and axiological nature to the aesthetic code, to further mimetic reproduction of that message in subsequent texts.
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The purpose of the chapter is to show that the case of Andrzej Bobkowski—which emerges from his extensive epistolography—eludes all renditions of the concept of emigration. The associated strategy of creating identity is the result of the confrontation of the author of Sketches in Pen with the otherness, which was the result of constant contacts with ideologically deformed Europe. Bobkowski’s correspondence (with, among many others, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, Jerzy Giedroyc, Jerzy Turowicz, Tymon Terlecki and Aniela Mieczysławska) witnesses the end of French universalism. According to the epistolographer, Europe of that time became the center of totalitarian ideology and he took on the role of “the third”—an observer, not enclosed within the symbolic register of reality. The fall of the ideals from youth inspired Bobkowski to ask a question about his own subjectivity. The place considered, until World War II, a quintessence of Western European civilization and at the same time the center of Bobkowski’s own symbolic universe, ceased to be a reference system for his identity. Therefore, paradoxically, the place which was foreign to him culturally and socially, allowed him to self-determine and reforge his cultural identity. He managed to find his spiritual home in Guatemala. Consequently, the strategy adopted by Bobkowski in building his own subjectivity prompts the question of whether the protection project of his “I” was a fight against strangeness or, on the contrary, its affirmation.
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The present corpus-based study analyzes the semantics of two spatial prepositions, near and next to, which encode the concept of proximity and which may be transferred to other nonspatial domains. The research suggests that the semantic structures of the two prepositions are best seen as semantic networks, with the primary spatial senses functioning as their respective prototypes and other related senses as more peripheral extensions. At the same time, an insight into their rather impoverished polysemies in comparison to other spatial prepositions, such as on, in, at, or over, is demonstrated. The question of Polish equivalence is also taken into consideration. English–Polish dictionaries suggest that near and next to may be translated in a similar way, that is, by means of words such as obok, opodal, and w pobliżu for near, and obok, przy, and tuż przy for next to. The present study suggests that those equivalents are, in fact, suitable, however, only for the primary spatial senses of the prepositions under study, while more peripheral senses require other linguistic means to be expressed in Polish.
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The aim of the article is to reconstruct a conceptual category through propositional semantics model, that is, taking into account predicate-argument structures encoded in the lexical meaning of such verbal units as Pol nagradzać/nagrodzić and Eng award/reward as well as abstract nouns Pol nagroda and Eng prize. The article will concentrate on a contrastive analysis of collocations with the abstract nouns prize and nagroda with a noun component. The research will focus on description and cognitive interpretation of semantic functions of participants in a cognitive model of the situation of awarding, including the obligatory (subject, addressee, instrument/means, reason) as well as facultative elements (e.g., aim). The novelty is introduced by establishing a category of semantic syncretism, that is, syncretic realization of a number of semantic functions in one argument position. The results show, inter alia, that the propositional-semantic analysis of a conceptual category cannot be limited to language corpora and linguistic competence (e.g., lexical) and that it should include knowledge of situational patterns as well as experiential foundation, that is, information on alternative forms of realization of the same situational pattern. Data for the study was excerpted from two corpora: NKJP (Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego – National Corpus of Polish) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English).
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The global community is currently in the midst of a refugee crisis unlike anything seen since WWII. Only the Syrian Civil War has displaced millions, forcing nearly five million civilians to flee the war-torn country and leaving millions more adrift within its borders. The plight of refugees is back at the top of news bulletins but it has been a constant theme in modern literature. The current trauma of displaced people on the move in Europe is nothing new, and accounts of forced migration have been told since the earliest times. The refugee experience is a well-documented one: there are quite a number of great works of literature either written by refugees, or dealing with the refugee experience. Aneta Jurzysta in her analysis focuses on the latest novel by Michael Köhlmeier that looks at the refugee crisis from a child’s perspective. Köhlmeier’s dark fairy tale, first published in Germany in 2016 as “Das Mädchen mit dem Fingerhut” (“The Girl With the Thimble”), takes its English title from its protagonist, Yiza, a six-year-old girl who escapes with two older boys from a home for migrant children. Trekking through snowy forests and housing settlements, they evade police custody, subsisting on the margins of society. Narrated in simple language that reflects the slow-burn, linear thought processes of children, Das Mädchen mit dem Fingerhut is a pertinent and timely tale of displacement, foreignness and suffering. In an unnamed country, a trio of homeless children of unspecified nationalities like feral animals on the loose are trying by their will and their wits to survive another day. Köhlmeier’s novella, written in clipped prose, captures the narrow, frightened world-view of the war-scarred children in a cultural, climatic, and linguistic wasteland.
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In the chapter Photography and Painting as a Space of Alienation in Stefan Chwin’s “Hanemann”, Olga Osińska addresses the relations between the reception of a photography and a painting in reference to the eponymous Polish novel. At first, according to Francois Brunet, Osińska distinguishes between traditional and modern way of reading photographs, favouring the latter, constructivist theory that describes photographs as affecting its viewer with an impulse to create a fictional narrative. In the core part of the chapter, Osińska depicts how the novel’s protagonist, Hanemann, fantasizes about the idea of a suicide or his own sense of alienation, concluding, that the interpretation of a photography as a kind of confabulation can be seen therein not only as a way of a therapeutic self-identification, but also as a self-aware artistic strategy.
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The chapter concerns Magdalena Tulli’s novels, such as "Sny i kamienie" (1995), "W czerwieni" (1998), "Tryby" (2003), Skaza (2006), with the exception of her autobiographical prose "Włoskie szpilki" and "Szum". Wójtowicz-Zając focuses here on the discursive means of producing otherness in "Zamiast procesu. Raport o mowie nienawiści" (2003), compiled by Magdalena Tulli and Sergiusz Kowalski, used as a predominant reference for presented interpretation. The report offers an overview of otherness and foreignness presented throughout the analyses of storylines, vocabulary, idioms, style, or other language tools used for constructing the other in radical right-wing newspapers. Almost every Tulli’s novel, from "Sny i kamienie" to "Szum", reiterates the aforementioned issues, either as the main topic ("Skaza", 2006), or part of author’s personal experience ("Włoskie szpilki", "Szum"), or embedded as a secondary plot, initiated in some point of narration ("W czerwieni", 1998, "Tryby", 2003). "Sny i kamienie", Tulli’s literary debut, on the other hand, is shown as a tractate on creational powers of language which completes analyses from "Zamiast procesu". An emphasis on this creational powers of language in Tulli’s novels leads to comparing the report’s conclusions, that envision the world presented in selected newspapers, with linguistic rules composing the narrative in Tulli’s novels. The work of the metaphor, realized through its literalization, backgrounds her writing style allowing to emphasize the discursive power of creating divisions between the self and the other as well as between individual as a victim. The article tracks down how the observations from the report interweave with individual plots which span from literary tractates on the creational power of language (Sny i kamienie) to meticulous observations of the nature of separating, excluding, and naming of the other. Magdalena Tulli’s novels are therefore, argued to serve as a perfect ‘laboratory’ for studying discursive means of producing the otherness and exclusion alike.
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The paper investigates various aspects of the stranger category as they are presented in one of the best-known modern utopias, “MaddAddam” by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. The “MaddAddam” trilogy envisions a dark, dystopian world and, as such, it might be regarded as a drastic, exaggerated attempt to draw attention towards a negative side of the Western civilization. It is, therefore, both a literary and an intellectual attempt to diagnose the state of the modern world. This diagnosis dates back not only to the classical dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s “1984” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, but also to recently published novels, such as “Homo Novus” by Aldona Likus-Canon. This elaborated futuristic world-building urges the reader to ponder upon why even the most sophisticated visions of well-planned perfect societies—if only put into practice—can lead to inevitable catastrophes, the results of which are hard to imagine. The main analytical category of this research is the concept of the stranger coined by the German sociologist, Georg Simmel, for whom the alienation became an inseparable synthesis of the nearness and remoteness. The essential components of Simmel’s model of the stranger and, in particular, the specific interdependence between its components form the analytical background of this chapter. Banaś investigates here the aforementioned model and describes the mechanisms of the stranger’s functioning in the analysed dystopian world of MaddAddam.
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The chapter investigates Margaret Atwood’s “MaddAddam” (2013) in the context of religious mythologies as the crucial background in the process of civilization foundation. Religion—mainly in the form of Christian dogmas and beliefs—constitutes here a means rather than an end itself: it becomes a source of mythologies that enable the characters to understand the surrounding post-catastrophe reality. It also makes it possible to build a new civilisation on the ruins of the past one. Since “MaddAddam” focuses on the scientifically generated humanoids, the Crakers—and their endeavours to build their own culture—this urge for mythologies reflects the Crakers’ growing cultural awareness. What we can see in MaddAddam is the post-apocalyptic society with the reinterpreted Christianity in its centre, as these are the religion-based mythologies that constitute the momentum of the new civilisation and force us to reconsider religion’s impact on our culture in broader terms. It also seems interesting to approach the notion of post-Christian mythologies in “MaddAddam” in the context of their intersection with the utopia–dystopia dichotomy. On the one hand, there is a utopian realisation of the concept of a paradise on earth as one group of survivors, namely the Crakers, are at the beginning of the process of creating their own civilisation. On the other, the post-apocalyptic world constitutes a nightmarish dystopia for the few remaining representatives of old humanity because, as they correctly realize, it is the actual end of their civilization. What both cements and influences these two approaches is religion and the basic cultural processes it triggers.
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The chapter contains an analysis of the ecotopian motifs in the narratives of N. Farmer (the Matteo Alacrán novels, 2002; 2013), S. Collins (“The Hunger Games” cycle, 2008-2010) and M. Lu (the “Legend” cycle, 2011-2013), which belong to the contemporary dystopian literature for young adults. The basic device looked into is personification, working along the traditional, intuitive connection between pristine Nature and a small child. The authors depart from the typical anthropocentric picture of children’s literature, and tend to orient themselves towards the posthuman and the extended self, endorsing the inclusive worldview. The classification used in the study—Nature-endorsing and Nature-skeptical narratives—reposes on the landmark publications of Noga Applebaum (2009) and Zoe Jaques (2015), and is supplemented with references to broadly understood ecocriticism. The first part of the chapter discusses the relation between Farmer’s novels—as the closest to Callenbach’s “Ecotopia”—to the Gaia hypothesis. The second part concentrates on the transformation of the Eden motif in Lu’s cycle, and the third part investigates the interplay between the Medean Katniss and the “ecotopian” Prim in Collins’s books. The analysis confirms the destabilization of anthropocentrism in the juvenile fiction and its posthumanist slant, as well as the gradual decline of the romanticized vision of Nature and technophobic narratives. The myth of healing, regenerative Nature is shown as outdated and even harmful. Although most of the personifications discussed in the chapter fall into the Nature-endorsing attitude, which subjects Nature to human beings, the authors lay bare the manipulative aspect of such devices as an element of social engineering, which burdens citizens with the fight for what is already lost. Instead of the classic Eden, the writers construct technological paradise, which sustains ecotopian dreams only in the form of simulations or hybrid forms, connecting human, Nature and machine.
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The chapter “Postcolonial Imaginary Worlds in the Works of Andrzej Ziemiański” delivers a postcolonial interpretation of the work of Polish fantasy writer, Andrzej Ziemiański. The theoretical part summarizes the critical standpoints towards postcolonialism delivered by Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Robert J. C. Young and Bill Ashcroft. The research is based on five volumes composing the series “Pomniki Cesarzowej Achai” by Andrzej Ziemiański. First featured in Achaja—the previous Ziemiańki’s series—the fictitious world is significantly expanded to include new characters and locales. Among the latter are significant differences which point at postcolonial relationship in the analysis of the “first encounters”—which, according to Mariola Lekszycka, complements the interpretation of Ziemiański’s oeuvre that was heretofore looked upon from feminist perspective.
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