Linguistic Forms of Balance Building in International Relations. A Linguistic Analysis of the Reconciliation Letter of the Polish Bishops to Their German Brothers of 1965

In his article, Waldemar Czachur makes an attempt of analysing the Reconciliation Letter of the Polish Bishops to their German Brothers of 1965 in terms of strategies aimed at building balance in international relations. The section which outlines the historical background of the letter and its political significance for Poland and the Polish-German relations is followed by linguistic analysis of subsequent parts of the letter to look at various balancing strategies between appreciating oneself and the recipient and protecting oneself and the recipient in the spirit of Goffman’s ritual equilibrium.

Key words: 1965 Reconciliation Letter of the Polish bishops to German bishops, linguistic politeness, relationship building strategies, letter

Ways of Realising Persuasive Function in Job/ Professional Training Advertisements from the “Czas” Newspaper in the Second Half of the 19th Century

The article examines job and professional training advertisements published in Kraków in the daily newspaper “Czas” between 1850 and 1890. The analysed material includes both: job offers and announcements of job seekers. In the education section of the newspaper the advertisements are published by schools, enterprises, teachers’ institutions and individuals ready to accept pupils for apprenticeship programs. The analysis covers the persuasive vocabulary (the role of the name of the advertiser, most common adjectives and adverbs evaluating the service), genre of the advertisement (announcement, request, letter, and all sorts of hybrid forms) as well as the grammatical level of the analysed texts (persuasive aspect of compound sentences). The analysis of the material leads to the conclusion that the advertisements published in the “Czas” newspaper between 1850 and 1890 rarely realise the persuasive function only. Their persuasive role was realised through the selection of vocabulary and genre as well as by modifying and combining features of various genres.

Key words: function, persuasion, advertisement, job, professional training

“And You? How Much are You Lacking in Happiness?” The Socialization Abilities of Advertising

In this text Emilia Kałuzińska is trying to reconstruct socializing offer of advertising. For this purpose, she analyzes the linguistic picture of the world in the spoken texts ads shown on children’s channel. High vocabulary attendance in the field of buying and selling contributes to extract CONSUMPTION AREA, among which stands out exposing of NEWNESS, as well as LOANS that are in commercials autotelic value.

Key words: media socialization, advertisement, child, Polish of consumer

Functions of Satan’s Topos in Contemporary Polish Catholic Discourse

In the contemporary Polish Catholic discourse one can notice increased presence of figure of Satan and Biblical topos of his fight with God. The figure appears not only in strictly religious texts but also in discussion on up to date phenomenon of social life, such as abortion, in-vitro fertilization, homosexual partnerships and others. The article is trying to answer the question about functions of this topos. The answer is being searched with usage of sociological findings on the role of language in religion and the role of religion in social life – both issues are discussed in the first chapter. The second chapter, based on fragments from catholic press, presents ways of language construction of analyzed figure. The third chapter focuses on four functions of the topos. The first one is to support religious vision of the world; the second is to strengthen so called nomos, which is the conjunction of rules on which the society is based; the next two functions have rhetorical, persuasive character. The Biblical topos is a kind of a rhetorical formula, which enables in an easy and simple way to explain and to judge the reality but at the same time it gives a very schematic and simplified picture.

Key words: contemporary Catholic discourse, Satan, Biblical topos, function

Language of Provocation in the Alternative Media on Example of the Online Radio Station KonteStacja

The internet has seen an increase in the number of media standing in opposition to the so-called mainstream and questioning the stale state of affairs. The main tool they use to challenge the mainstream is language. To distinguish itself from traditional information providers, online alternative media use it in a highly provocative way. An example of such media is the internet radio KonteStacja. The online community of its supporters has coined a specific language, in which provocation is present in nearly all types of texts.

Key words: language of provocation, Internet radio, alternative media, new media

The Linguistic Analysis and the Analysis from the Perspective of Speech Therapy of the Synthetic Method of Elicitation of the Dental Affricative Sound

The author Danuta Pluta-Wojciechowska presents certain reflections on the methods of sound elicitation. She offers the linguistic analysis, as well as, the analysis from the point of view of speech therapy of the synthetic method of sound learning providing, at same time, the example of therapy where professionals dealt with case of dental affricative sound. In the following section of the text, the relevance of linguistic knowledge and the theory of speech therapy in the course of planning the providing speech treatment was stressed.

Key words: dyslalia, phonetics, speech therapy, sound elicitation

Lingual Dimension of the Paternalism – on the Examples of Doctor – Patient and Clerk – Client Interaction

In the paper, the issue of paternalism in the institutional talks is presented. The main features of paternalism as a communication strategy are shown sketchy. The author analyses two talks: a medical consultations and an institutional talk in the office. On these examples some of the basic manifestations of paternalism are presented, among them the ignoring of the patient`s voice, doctor`s domination including his knowledge regarding the patient`s individual feelings, using of the informal phrase “ty” (“you”), using of diminutive forms. As the result, the voice of patient/client is outgrown or muted, and at the same time the voice of the institution is dominating, and even strengthened.

Key words: paternalism, asymmetry in communication, doctor – patient interaction, clerk – client interaction, conversation analysis

Political Discourse on TV

This article describes polish political discourse on TV. The author considers four parameters of discourse’s general organization. They are: (1) profiling of discourse’s community, (2) generic conventions, which are preponderant on TV and typical in political discourse, (3) primary classes of discourse’s participants, (4) relationship: the discourse world and reality.

Key words: media, television, media genres, political discourse

Authority and Passion. Władysław Lubaś and School of Socioliguistics in Katowice

The article shows the preliminary stage of a research work – pioneering at that time – on the city language as well as of the formation of sociolinguistic methods to describe the contemporary oral Polish; it gives the account of a group of linguists based in Katowice the leading figure of which was Władysław Lubaś – his intellectual passion and undisputed scholarly authority gave rise to the Katowice school of socioliguistics.

Key words: Władysław Lubaś, socioliguistics, Katowice school of socioliguistics

University vis-à-vis Changes and Needs of Contemporary Times. A Few Remarks on the Practical Fields of Study

In the article the deliberations concerning university, its place in the present world, the status of academics and students, and cooperation between university and business were shown. Moreover, the authors pictured how amendments to the Higher Education Law in 2005 influenced the creation of new fields of study. Some new majors were presented, especially the practical ones created at the University of Silesia in Katowice. Particular attention was paid to the promotion and crisis communication, the field of study that was developed and still is managed in a substantive and organisational way by the academics in the Irena Bajerowa Institute of the Polish Language.

Key words: university education, practical fields of study, promotion and crisis communication

The Twilight of Structuralism in Linguistics?

This article attempts to offer a brief description of the overall situation in contemporary linguistics in the context of the changes taking place. Specifically, it refers to the ongoing discussions in the areias of various contemporary humanist disciplines on the subject of the achievements of structuralism and is future prospects in studies on language. The main theses considered here are: 1. One should not speak of the decline structuralism without indicating how this term should be understood and defining the scope of the teoretical-methodological principles developed by de various structuralist schools. 2. Taking into account the general principles and methods of the description, as given in the majority of contemporary literature on the subject it may reasonably be supposed that as yet no theoretical-methodological counter-proposal has emerged which, opposing structuralism, would discard al its basic premises while at the same time protecting the autonomy of linguistics as a science. The author endeavours to show that it would be more rational to speak of a successive – and broadly enriched – stage of evolution of the idea of structuralism.

Key words: structuralism, linguistics, methodological principles, evolution of studies on language

The Identifying Function of Language

The linguistic literature (Bühler, Jakobson) mostly mentions six functions of language, paying little attention to the identifying function. Following the assumption that language is not an ‘ordinaty’ element of culture, but is its main basis, we believe that it has more and less stable elements, whose functions are arranged hierarchically. The identifying function has medium stability, is historically variable and becomes particularly important during intensive political changes or (nationalistic) conflicts. An example might be the recent split of Serbo-Croatian into tree languages.

The identifying function is always connected with evaluation, which often exaggerates the positive character of a group and its language. Other groups and other languages can be perceived as worse. The identifying function is realized both individually (it can be identified with the expressive function of an individual then) and in a group. In this role it is often used or even abused in modern culture and especially politics.

Instead of synonyms and periphrastic expressions we suggest that Polish linguists should make use of the term identifying function of language defined as a nationally or internationally protected function (based on cultural, ideological, or – less frequantly – religious elements) which enables a group of people of common aims, beliefs, ideas and interests to create a community.

Key words: functions of language, community, political changes and conflicts, ideology