Janusz Tazbir
Polish language and national awareness
From the tenth century to the twentieth century, the group of Poles speaking national language and aware of belonging to their nation and of its historical tradition is gradually growing. The majority of Polish-speaking people gained this awareness during the World War II.
In the early Piasts’ royal rule, there was no general Polish awareness. Its formation was hindered by the fact that the borderland, such as Silesia, passed under the dominion of neighbouring countries. Separation of various lands was perpetuated by feudal fragmentation of the Polish Kingdom. Among the elites, however, the sense of unity arose, as a result of being under the rule of the dynasty of “natural rulers of Poland” (according to Jan Dlugosz).
Polonization was quite often accompanied by the adoption of Polish customs and culture, and sometimes also of historical tradition. The progress in Polonization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resulted from the social prestige of the nobles and of their privileges. Outside of the Republic, to a certain degree, they were connected of the (temporarily) powerful position of Poland. The overriding character of the Polish language was taken for granted by the other nations living in the Republic. This belief was expressed particularly by residents of the Royal Prussia who perceived German language as a regional, or “domestic” one.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Polish became the most popular Slavonic language, serving primarily, but not only, the other countries belonging to this linguistic group as a tool of inter-state and inter-civilisation communication. The attractiveness of our language and culture within the Republic can be explained by the prevailing tolerance in a “state without stakes”.
One set of factors determined attractiveness of Polish culture in the seventeenth century, another one decided about its assimilation strength two hundred years later. Attractiveness of the Sarmatian ideology of the Golden Liberty was due to concepts of civil liberties, and the superiority of the nobles over the ruler who does not dare to be a tyrant under the threat of dropping out of the throne. In the era of Partitions, these reasons were accompanied by the fascination with the romantic vision of independence, military struggle for freedom of individuals and of the nation.
Before the Partitions of Poland, no one considered the progress in Polonization (or losses incurred in this field) being gain or loss of the noble state and nation. The language division, coinciding with the class division, was thought to be something obvious. Before, such concepts as denationalization or Polish propaganda were not known, because no one needed them.
The vision of the extermination of Polish language, however, has not fulfilled. Currently, our language is not threatened by being totally replaced by the English. It is yet impoverished by the inflow of profanity. Publishing Polish scientific works in English, postulated by some circles, would lead to gradual killing of Polish scientific language. Let us hope, however, that this will not happen. And, finally, that we stop to consider the history of Polish language in terms of Darwinian struggle for existence.
Jerzy Bartmiński
Ethics of speech and colloquial communication pattern
The problem of “ethics of speech” is part of a series of similar subjects, dealt frequently by scientists, media people, politicians, as well as philosophers and theologians. Such interest is due to the increased role of speech in social activity and possible ways to abuse. The issue of ethics of speech goes beyond spelling and grammar, and even vocabulary, and directs towards the practice of communication.
Rules of discourse have axiological grounds, as a consequence of the cultural canon of values adapted by the community. The basic value, accepted in the cultural environment to which we belong, is dignity of a man, right to liberty and equal participation in community life, and postulate of benevolent, partner relations to one another, corresponding with the idea of brotherhood or solidarity.
Basic principles of the ethics of speech, developed by Jadwiga Puzynina and Anna Pajdzińska, include the following recommendations. Senders should not hurt other people or social groups with hostile, humiliating, hurting words, or lie to others, manipulate them with half-truths, flattery, demagoguery or blackmail. They should speak the way that partners feel safe and are aware of acceptance. Senders should also say what they believe to be true, unless the omission or falsehood are justified by the welfare of the others. Finally, they should speak so as not to impede the partner to understand and not to fret them with incorrectness or linguistic snobbery. Recipients should not break the dialogue, lock themselves to the words of the others or become prejudiced. They should not be naive in the receipt of statements and should be aware of the possibility of deception and manipulation. Recipients should listen to the others with good will, but without naivety, trying to understand their reasons.
As can be seen today, public (political) discourse has been substantively sterilized and lost its credibility. Freedom of expression, pluralism of broadcasters, opening to the world and foreign (mainly Anglo-American) influence, ability to express individual preferences and evaluations caused the flood of profanity, offensive expressions or lies. After the turn of the year 1989, it is “ritual chaos” that first prevailed in public communication. In the course of time, there came also incredible brutalization of language, “hate speech”.
The analysis of the extensive collection of names of speaking (verba dicendi) allowed the author to reconstruct the current picture of good speaking as well as the pattern of a “good communicator”. In light of the language data, a “good communicator” is someone who:
(1) in terms of interaction – recognizes their recipients (addressees) and treats them as partners, respects them, makes contact, is able to listen, carries out a dialogue;
(2) in terms of modality – speaks with a clearly recognizable intention, i.e. their statements are seen as either true, or not following the criteria of truth and falsity (a kind of language games, such as jokes);
(3) in terms of content – communicates in a meaningful, significant way, ensures clarity of communication.
Ethics of speech, understood as a set of rules of linguistic intercourse, subject to codification, should:
(1) in the field of interaction – respect the requirement of respect for partners, readiness to listen and to carry out a dialogue;
(2) in the field of cognition – respect conventions allowing to distinguish speaking seriously (following the criteria of truth and falsity) from various language games (jokes), postulates and assumptions (not following those criteria);
(3) in the field of formal language – respect recommendations resulting from the reconstructed “model of good speech”.
Andrzej Markowski
Model language norm
Some twenty years ago, linguists involved in the culture of language took the note of the need for new rules of codifying the Polish language norm and describing its two levels, which can be reconstructed on the basis of acts of linguistic communication of contemporary Poles. These two levels include model language norm and applied language norm. The model norm has been defined as a set of language elements which are used deliberately, with the sense of their semantic and stylistic value, and which are in accordance with the language tradition, grammatical and semantic rules of the Polish language as well as with the growth trends that we can observe.
Such approach to the model norm meant that its essence was the same as the essence of the general language norm, distinguished before the diversification mentioned above was carried out. The important novelty in the approach of the early 1990s was the introduction of the applied norm, which was met by certain language elements that previously, often (though not always) remained below the codified general language norm, and which today, however, are socially approved in specific types of contacts.
Striving to achieve the level of model norm should characterize the language spoken by members of Parliament, priests or actors, as well as by journalists, politicians, scientists and other intellectuals. This means that the assessment of the language spoken on television and radio, in newspapers, Parliament and science should be in accordance to model norm. It should be also taught in school. The practice of the last twenty years has not confirmed these assumptions. Polish public language was often different from the model norm outlined in such a way. On the one hand, colloquial Polish language dominated there. On the other hand, in the public speech, there are many expressions close to newspeak (or new newspeak) and those representing official style. Such frequent deviations from the model norm impel to formulate a question about the future of this level of language norm.
Model norm of Polish language should be taught in school, and applied and required (by teachers) during every lesson. It should be disseminated by the media, especially those public. Knowledge of and compliance with this norm should be the standard in the speeches of members of Parliament, government and local government. Polish language based on model norm should be spoken in Church and written in its documents.
Another issue is new codification of the model norm of Polish. We must develop such tools (i.e. revaluated criteria for linguistic correctness) that will allow to objectively establish the accordance of particular words, their forms, connections and meanings with the model norm. As a result, a newly developed normative dictionary should contain only elements representing the model norm.
Another issue is to develop means to check whether the model norm is respected where it should be respected. The solution is to develop comprehensive system of language training for employees of public institutions, especially journalists, that would finish by writing a test and that would be certified. The same refers to teachers of all subjects. It is desired to introduce classes of culture of language in the study programmes of many specialties in higher education, as well as to disseminate knowledge about language on radio and television and on web portals.
Jan Miodek
Polish language spoken by different generations
Among many features of the Polish language after 1989, clarity and expansiveness of the language of the youngest generations are most striking. The number of questions relating to all kinds of lexical and morphological phenomena of the youth language is still growing. This period in the history of language is marked by the strongest intergenerational differences in communicative behaviours.
Typical features of the contemporary youth language include strong confinement in the colloquial communicative behaviours, use of morphological truncations, influence of electronic reality and dominance of English as the most popular foreign language.
The influence of English can be seen for example in the sphere of stylistics. Foreign lexical insertions used by older generations to reinforce the expressiveness of statements, were generally of Greek, Latin, French, German or Russian origin, while in the statements of the youth, English insertions play the same role.
The most important linguistic and stylistic phenomenon, which is the source of intergenerational conflicts, is progressing colloquialization, brutalization and vulgarization of everyday communicative behaviours of the young users of Polish, even more clearly promoted by the media (fashion of being ‘cool’).
Emails and short messages are of colloquial character. Brutalization of the language can be observed even in texts written by young sports journalists. Profanity has become, unfortunately, a hallmark of the Poles in Europe. All groups, men and women, boys and girls, abuse dirty words.
All the phenomena described so far, remaining in the field of vocabulary and stylistics, manifested themselves substantially after 1989 and remain the linguistic and stylistic sign of new geopolitical, social, economic, civilizational and cultural reality.
On the other hand, grammatical phenomena are rather long-term processes. In the group of young speakers, these processes always occur more quickly. The youth accelerate the evolution of accent, e.g. they stress the formerly enclytic pronominal form (mi) by placing it at the beginning of statements.
In the field of phonetics, in turn, young Polish women more and more clearly pronounce traditional Polish palatal consonants ([ś], [ź], [ć], [dź]) in a half-palatal way. Apart from that, asynchronous pronunciation of soft labial consonants disseminates. We also observe gradual reduction of vowel nasality. This process, however, is rather slow.
In the field of word formation, there is an increase in the number of composed words with the constituents in the first place. In colloquial speech, they are still perceived as unnatural for Polish word-formation system in which the constituent is traditionally placed after the identifier. Nevertheless, such constructions become more and more popular and that is why we start to treat them as neutral ones.
In terms of traditional Polish language, the most worrying problem is the increasing habit of not inflecting proper names in official texts. The youngest generations uncritically surrender this manner.
The turn of the year 1989 moved us into completely new reality, and the achievements of civilization related with the electronic reality brought communication phenomena which we never dreamed of some twenty or thirty years ago. Young generations deal with them more easily, and their communicative behaviours reflect some inevitable global processes. The tension between these feelings and behaviours causes something that can be described as typical evolutionary course of Polish language.
Michael Ratajczak
(No) language skills
Secondary school teachers should refer to knowledge and skills that students acquired at earlier stages of education. They have also a large selection of school textbooks which allow them to acquaint the first-class students with the ancient, medieval and Old Polish literature and culture.
According to the core curriculum, a high school student should be able to: independently and critically comment on the observed phenomena of culture, see and comment on the specific properties of known literary works, recognize values in literary works, interpret works in different contextual combinations, use in a natural and functional way literary and cultural terms and concepts. However, it is very difficult to conclude that high school teachers managed to fully meet these objectives.
From the school perspective, we should confirm the universality of linguistic indifference, i.e. increasingly apparent indifference towards the issues of language, resulting from disregarding language as a value. Certainly, no interest in the issues of language is becoming a growing problem not only among students. However, it is school where it is probably the most noticeable.
Secondary school students quickly acquire the pragmatic approach. At the end of the first class, they decide to learn only what is necessary to pass university exams. It is most probably not the Polish language. Students are also discouraged by the fact that all universities require speaking foreign languages, and only few verify knowledge of the mother tongue.
Furthermore, the gap among school requirements, natural passion of young people, and the offer of contemporary media culture is becoming more and more apparent. We should perhaps return to the discussion of the educational effectiveness of the chronological system of teaching literature in a secondary school and go through the content of textbooks, aimed at acquisition of knowledge and language skills. If the secondary school does not create conditions for developing students’ passions and interests, it has no influence on language development in the areas where they often tend to be real specialists.
It seems very difficult to correlate teaching literature and teaching language. Definitely more energy and time is spent at school to analyze artistic texts, much less is spent on developing language skills. Possible changes in humanistic education (i.a. reducing the number of hours of Polish language to four per week) will not bring positive change in this field.
Tadeusz Zgółka
Teaching Polish as the mother tongue in the European perspective
Due to international agreements, teaching the mother tongue has been recently significantly modified. This follows from the documents that are to apply in united Europe. Another aspect of the unification of Europe is the practical need to use one common language, which is in fact, clearly and irreversibly, English. It is therefore necessary to reconsider the content, the model and the method of teaching Polish as the mother tongue, in part also as a foreign language.
Globalization in terms of language means among other things the impose of uniform educational models (such as the Bologna Process). They began to introduce the unified European Qualifications Framework. They take into account mainly the effects of education, while they disregard of standards, programs, curricula, etc. Therefore, the model of the Polish teacher education during academic studies requires urgent consideration. The question is what degree and type of studies should be enough for a Polish teacher prepared to work at all levels of education, how to determine requirements for a graduate of Polish studies in terms of National Qualifications Framework, and how to ensure an appropriate level of language (linguistic) education to break the stereotype that a Polish teacher is a literary scholar.
We seriously need to think of placing Polish studies (teaching Polish language, literature and culture) in the list of specialties ordered by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Decreasing attractiveness of these studies is dangerous from the civilization point of view. To raise the prestige of the mother tongue, we should also support the introduction of language communication classes in every, mainly public (subject to relevant ministers), college and university in all fields and specializations. This would offset the prestige of the mother tongue and the value of compulsory education in foreign languages. In addition, the mother tongue should be taken into account during the recruitment procedure in higher education.
Polish school (especially at the secondary level) should be forced to implement teaching mother tongue and linguistic classes in a relatively autonomous way (and not ancillary to the teaching of literature). This can be done by creating two separate subjects: Polish language (or language communication, or rhetoric) and Polish literature and culture. Optionally, teachers may be required to carry out language classes within a certain time per week.
Within the implementation of Polish education, it should be considered that students simultaneously (often since kindergarten) learn a foreign language, which may be pragmatically valued higher than Polish lessons. In particular, it is desirable to incorporate some elements of the program that would align to an international (and not just European) level. This refers to teaching standard language, and taking greater account of more pragmalinguistic, communication and rhetorical dimensions.
The core curriculum should highlight the principle that all teachers (and not only Polish ones) are responsible for the development of Polish language at school. Another important issue is the educational role of the media. There is no doubt that they should be involved in not only creating the standard variety of contemporary Polish, but also in language education. It refers to both practical application (see the BBC English model) and broadcasting educational programmes of linguistic topics.
Halina Zgółkowa
Student (school) slang in search of inspiration
The phenomenon called student slang (student language, student jargon, school slang) is known perhaps so long as there is institutional education, or school. This variety is one of the oldest in Polish language. Apart of its persistence, at the same time, school slang is characterized by unusual dynamics of changes, since it increasingly gets lexical and phraseological inspiration not only from the changing situation in schools, but more often, from the surrounding reality.
Student slang, seen through the prism of its origin, is very diverse. It either acquires elements of the internal school environment, or it enriches thanks to students’ participation in a wide range of non-school environments. It is yet students who use, but also create and codify the student slang. Such a phenomenon – going beyond the school environment – is relatively new.
Student slang is a variety of language used by students in extracurricular situations: during a break or outside the school. In fact, it is used by people aged 12 to 19. There are, however, lexical items which durability clearly exceeds generational boundaries (these are, for example, names of school as an institution, teachers’ or students’ nicknames, names of school subjects).
For some time, student slang remained a kind of taboo. In recent times, such an approach has been virtually rejected. As a result, the slang started to be freely spoken in “foreign” environments. A new phenomenon is, for example, the use of student slang by teachers, not only within their environment, but also outside of school.
Among the sources of inspiration got by students, we can identify: the school itself and its reality, vocabulary taken from required reading and lessons of history, prison jargon, vocabulary used by drug addicts and youth subcultures, regional and colloquial vocabulary, sophisticated words and phrases taken from the literature, foreign languages, television, new media, especially the Internet, social networking websites, blogs and instant messaging, mobile system, short messaging conventions.
Student slang, spoken even by teachers, is rarely the subject of reflection, especially during Polish lessons. At least until recently, certain hypocrisy prevailed in this respect: both students and teachers knew that school slang were used by young people during breaks and outside of school. However, this language variety is not discussed during lessons, since we consider school teaching only correct Polish language. Meanwhile, student slang remains an important variety of Polish language, because it names elements of everyday school life and extracurricular activities.
Danuta Krzyżyk, Helena Synowiec
Do textbooks help or hinder students master knowledge and language skills?
To write a textbook, the author must perfectly know the subject, make a selection of issues, be able to deliver content in a clear and interesting way, according to abilities and needs of students at a given level of education. The textbook value is determined mainly by linguistic material. The teaching text must be distinguished by communicative and precise wording. Meanwhile, various types of language mistakes and faults continually appear in main and source texts, as well as in tables, figures, diagrams, commands and questions, or footnotes.
Grammatical mistakes, rare in general education textbooks, far more frequent in training manuals, reflect trends that can be observed in contemporary Polish. It is word order mistakes that are dominating. Occasionally, there appear gross inflection errors, while pleonasms and tautologies occur far more often. Phraseological mistakes are rather sporadic.
Many authors of textbooks are prone to excessive condensation of content, brevity and ambiguity of wording. The others do not avoid wordiness, as well as excessive metaphors, used especially in chapter titles and subtitles. Sometimes, authors make use of colloquial expressions, making the text infantile. Stylistic dissonance is also caused by using the same words or their derivatives too close to each other.
From time to time, authors are unable to decide in which stylistic variety they wish to maintain their book. Making errors of substance often results in lack of precision. It also happens that particular chapters, usually written by various authors, strongly differ from each other in terms of stylistics and language. Also the link between the content of chapters is often weak.
Misspellings and typing mistakes are not very common. Much more often, there appear punctuation errors, in particular ignoring the comma after present adverbial participles.
Textbooks of geography, biology and chemistry, as well as many training manuals are overloaded with terminology, which may cause students’ confusion. Quite common is the use of two terms, both native and foreign, to denote a single concept. Only a few textbooks feature indexes or glossaries of concepts and terms. Not all the authors adjust explanations to cognitive and intellectual capabilities of students at various levels of education and of different types of schools. In many books, the text is excessively thickened with terminology, as well as difficult terminology is abused when discussing simple issues.
The text communicativity (clarity, intelligibility) is affected by many factors, including syntactic structures and vocabulary selection. Not all texts, however, can be assessed as fully readable and with no significant language complications.
Meanwhile, as far as textbooks are concerned, the index of text communicativity should always be slightly higher in comparison with the other texts. On the one hand, texts that are too simple and obvious would not arouse the readers’ interest, on the other hand, text that are too difficult would discourage them to read.
To raise the language level of textbooks, i.e. their communicativity are correctness, it would be worthwhile to develop guidebooks for authors and publishers, to oblige publishers to employ qualified editors, as well as to prepare a detailed guidebook for experts giving opinions on textbooks in terms of language.
Renata Przybylska
Rev. Wiesław Przyczyna
Archaic or modern, elevated or colloquial, jargon or newspeak? Polish language in the Roman Catholic Church
Functional diversity of the language in Church actually includes all known stylistic varieties of Polish: sacred language and oratorical style, formal and artistic language, language of authorities and media variety, as well as colloquial language. It is therefore difficult to characterize Polish language in the Roman Catholic Church, even in the most general terms.
In Church, there appears occasionally a tendency to modernize or translate into contemporary language these religious texts which are seen as incomprehensible or grossly inconsistent with today’s linguistic habit. The presence of archaisms is a feature of every religious language, making it exceptional compared to other varieties of Polish and raising it to the book or elevated style. That is why the development of religious language will always be accompanied by certain tension between what is old, archaic and traditional, and what is new and creative.
Elevated language is spoken in Church primarily in the liturgy. Apostrophes and titles related to God and saints as well as the vocabulary describing the life of Christ and His Mother are also of this character. Recognition of the Sacred as separate and impossible to confuse it with the Profane induces speakers to create and maintain separate lexical means, reserved only for God or saints. Furthermore, the category of elevatedness manifests itself in the syntax, especially by imitating syntactic structures and word order characteristic of biblical style. Deliberate renunciation of elevatedness and pathos can be observed in the ecumenical translation of the Bible. It is dominated by ordinary, everyday language, devoid of any festivity. Colloquial linguistic means appear in Church mostly in sermons. As far as the issue of introducing colloquial speech in religious communication, mainly to Bible translations, is concerned, many discussions take place. Their participants seem to be very divided in their opinions.
Some characteristics of jargon in the religious language can be seen in the specialized scientific theological language introduced into texts addressed not to specialists, but to all the faithful. This can be seen for example in specialized theological terminology, unknown to the general, used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or in notions abused in sermons and religious instruction materials. The tendency to fill religious language with terminology can make it uncommunicative and incomprehensible. Furthermore, due to that, religious experience may lose its existential, individual perspective.
The most important problems related to linguistic communication in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in Poland include: tension between the need for modernization of religious language and the tendency to preserve stylistic output of previous generations, e.g. traditional biblical style; expansion of colloquial speech; impact of formal Polish on the language of official documents and statements of Catholic hierarchy; problems with translation of the scientific theological language into the language of communication with the faithful; attempts to refresh the language of metaphysical experience; language negligence towards varieties associated with the sacred function of language.
Rev. Henryk Paprocki
Language in the Orthodox Church. Example of liturgical texts translations
First attempts to translate Orthodox liturgical texts into Polish were taken in the eighteenth century, both in the Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Church. They were abandoned after the Partitions of Poland, but the problem reappeared in 1918, after Poland regained independence, due to pressure from state authorities who sought to total Polonization of the Orthodoxy in Poland.
In the interwar period, the translation of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was approved by the council of bishops and published in 1936 as the “Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom”. In the same year, “Panikhida, or Prayers for the Departure of the Soul” was published. Another publication was the prayerbook for the Orthodox soldiers entitled “Soldier’s Friend” (Warsaw 1937, second edition 1939).
The outbreak of World War II did not interrupt these works, but they were continued outside of Poland. During the war and immediately afterwards, the well-known classicist, Professor Witold Klinger, made the translation of the “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom”. It was published in 1963 as “Discussion text”.
In 1960, the Church authorities decided to establish in Warsaw the first Orthodox parish using Polish as the language of liturgy. Due to resistance of some of the faithful and because of the growing conflict within the Church, services in Polish have never been celebrated. Such a situation maintained until 1970, when the first Orthodox parish using Polish in the liturgy was appointed in Wroclaw.
In the 1970s, they published the translation of basic liturgies, namely, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, and the Liturgy of St. James the Apostle. So far, the following works have been translated: Euchologion, plus supplementary material; Horologion, including troparia and kontakia for the whole liturgical year; Psalter; Gospels; Lenten Triodion; Paschal Triodion; Archijeratikon; Oktoechos; Menaion (Twelve Great Feasts, a number of minor feasts, in total 39 services); First Week of Lent (full texts of all services), Passion Week (full text of all services).
Texts and notes, as well as a selection of various liturgical chants, are available on the website of the Orthodox Pastoral Point of St. Martyr Gregory (Peradze) (www.liturgia.cerkiew.pl). The work on these texts continues.
The translation encounter difficulties arising from the fact that the Greek text is poetic, including vocabulary which is complex and misunderstood by the faithful, as well as structurally intricate sentences. It is accompanied by the habit of misreading the Slavonic text. In many cases, it is necessary to create new Polish terminology. However, taking into account that the translation of Byzantine Liturgy texts into French took 50 years, we are still at the beginning of the road.
Joanna Koleff-Pracka
Rev. Adrian Korczgo
The Word as a source of wisdom and life? Incorrectly correct language of Polish Protestants
Polish Lutherans from the beginning adopted Martin Luther’s thought, the Calvinism undertook the reformed thought of John Calvin, while Methodism, drawn from the Church of England, referred to the activity of John and Charles Wesley. All these currents of Protestantism are joined by the fundamental principle of the Reformation which influenced the language of Polish Protestants. It is sola scriptura (Latin ‘by Scripture alone’). This determines the profession of faith in terms of content and form, and decides on the language of Polish Protestants. They use it to communicate in the space of faith and the Church, in light of its historical and contemporary text sources. The Bible is seen as the only authority in the Christian life (Luther) and should permeate every area of our life (Calvin).
In Poland, the principle of sola scriptura was implemented in life through subsequent translations of the Bible, providing egalitarian access to it. In 1632 in Gdansk, there appeared the translation by Daniel Mikolajewski, regarded as canonical in both environments, Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed (Calvinist and the Czech Brethren), called the Gdansk Bible. Conservative Protestant circles believe that it reflects the spirit of the original to the largest extent.
Works on the modern translation of the Bible lasted from 1950 to 1975. The Warsaw Bible translation uses contemporary language, maintains, though, certain traditional biblical expressions, having its origins in the Gdansk Bible.
In the Evangelical theology, it is the Bible that remains the basic principle. Therefore, it has also its impact on linguistic forms of the liturgy. Texts of rites and prayers are based on biblical texts, in some parts, they are literal quotations or paraphrases of biblical words of the Institution, blessings and prophecies. Thus, those rites and liturgy are directly related to the used translation of the Bible. Its language, including all its specificity, has been transposed into the field of worship. The liturgical order of the Lutheran Church, published in 1955, was
based on the Gdansk Bible. That is why, the whole agenda was largely set in the nineteenth-century language. The Lutheran Church in Poland is now in train of preparing a set of liturgical books, based on the translation of the Bible of 1975. So far, we use rites of baptism, confirmation, marriage and ordination, as well as the agenda of the Liturgy of the Word and the service with the General Confession and the Holy Communion.
Singing has always played prominent role in everyday life of Evangelicals. Therefore, cantionals are widely used. They remain a repository of evangelical hymns. The “Evangelical Songbook”, published in 2002, used by Lutherans and Reformed in Poland and by Polish-speaking Lutherans in the Czech Republic, contains lyrics of 955 songs.
The Protestant language, so incorrectly correct, directed to the life-giving resources donated by God in the Word, always presents the Word as a source of wisdom and life, no matter if it uses archaic wording, or quite modern concepts.
Zbigniew Pasek
Katarzyna Skowronek
“Attractiveness” of the language of new religious movements from the perspective of linguistic and cultural studies
New religious movements, classified by the criterion of religious affiliation, include the following groups: movements originating from or related to oriental spirituality; movements originating from or related to the Christian tradition; scientologist and “scientific” movements; “healing” movements; neo-pagan movements and reconstructionist religions; neo-gnostic movements; movements of esoteric and occult traditions; movements of deep and radical ecology.
The enormous diversity of new religious movements manifests itself in the richness of concepts, theological, philosophical or ideological heterogeneity, and the existence of numerous, substantially separate “religious languages”. Written documents of these movements differ in genological and stylistic characteristics. These differences refer to the degree of “formality” of these texts and to the understanding of node words.
The analysis of node words: ‘energy’, ‘nature’, ‘growth’, ‘joy’, and ‘freedom’ shows not only the world of new religious movements, but also ways of thinking and feeling of a modern man, a new kind of sensibility. All these concepts also exist in physical, social and natural sciences. Achievements of these sciences are widely present in the social consciousness and form the basis of today’s world view. Language of new religious movements is therefore an attempt to combine “speaking in a religious way” with speaking that imposes discourse of educational, non-religious institutions. This can be viewed as an attempt to link the world of knowledge and that of faith in one harmonious belief and to use one language to describe the world of spirit and the world in which a modern man is to live.
Scientization of the language of new religious movements has its lexical source primarily in two areas of modern knowledge. The first one refers to the language of science (and sometimes of science fiction), another one is inspired by the language of modern biology, medicine, psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry.
The picture of the world that emerges from these texts is ambiguous and dialectical. Many religious groups are characterized by a high degree of statement firmness, the conviction of knowing the only way to truth and salvation, a type of strong assertion. On the other hand, these texts are usually constructed in such a general way that they express, in fact, religious or philosophical ideas acceptable for many people. The language certifies a certain, but not the only one, direction of evolution and development of religion in the Western culture.
Keywords show the ideas about the Sacred which are radically different from the Christianity and other monotheistic religions. Another different elements include the vision of holiness, different “procedures” of salvation that take place in statu nascendi, here and now. They are part of the secularised landscape of Western and American civilization, and are easily accepted by a modern man.
Linguistic phenomena present in the texts of new religious movements can be considered as some “vanguard” growth trends in the development of religious language in general. These changes present not only the direction of changes in religious language, but also the future, expected direction of evolution of religious language of the “old”, historical religions and Churches.
Adam Skibiński
Neuro-Linguistic Programming and other techniques of persuasion, or the return of rhetoric through the back door
Today, we can observe the public re-interest in rhetoric as the field of social practice in the form of new technologies of persuasion, including in particular Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The dissemination of non-scientific ways of practicing interpersonal skills, training and workshops, means the restitution of informal education regarding persuasive function of communication and language. Developing rhetoric skills, essentially abandoned by the formal education system, not only in Poland, finds its niche in the spontaneous movement of private education and the “industry” of personal development.
High social expectations and unmet need for special interpersonal skills, particularly in terms of persuasion and self-presentation, accompanied by gradually increasing need for good “sell-out” (for example on the labour market), as well as popularization in the mass media of the idea to use interpersonal skills in public life, make up the main reasons for the search of practical forms of training interpersonal skills. Formal university education rarely fulfils this function, simply because it does not possess adequate competence. Only in recent years, academic institutions in Poland began to mature to commercial forms of teaching, but not due to increasing competence in this field, but for the need to supplement their budgets.
NLP as the technology of effective communication has quickly found its application in the sales, promotion, advertising. However, it initially developed mainly as a new form of cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy which is actively developing to this day, also in Poland.
Similarly to the evolution of the NLP itself, also the perception of NLP compared to other psychotherapeutic orientations evolved over time. Today, NLP in Poland is treated not only as one of the sects of personal development, but rather as a group of charlatans educating their students in the art of manipulating minds of others. In some university departments of psychology, teaching NLP has even been banned.
A characteristic feature of the so-called psycho-business in Poland, materialized by the practices of some NLP trainers, is far-reaching amoral pragmatism and hyper-instrumentalism with strong focus on techniques and methods, usually accompanied with only superficial factual knowledge of their conceptual sources.
Popularity and widespread of NLP indicates the public’s need to upgrade skills of persuasion and self-development. The interest in NLP in Poland caused the emergence of the culture (subculture?) of so-called narcissistic sorcerer’s apprentices. For them, commercial technologies of persuasion remain creed, way of life and quite good source of income. It is the Internet (especially the so-called social media) that has become their element and main medium.
Undeniable importance, usefulness and controversial popularity of NLP in Poland indicates the urgent need to re-establish and implement formal training in applied rhetoric already at early levels of school education. Interest in new technologies of persuasion signals a certain return of rhetoric. Accepting NLP methods in training rhetoric, or, more broadly: interpersonal skills, is a challenge for the formal education system to the same extent as preparing the young generation for the effective functioning of the labour market.
Jacek Wasilewski
Language of tabloids. Sources and mechanisms
In tabloid narrations, we can identify a constant rhetorical structure, manifested by the opposition of figures from the orbis exterior and those within the orbis interior. The contrast is even more interesting that it is repeated regularly in subsequent tabloid narrations and it determines the group with whom the reader identifies.
The structure of the group conflict in which one group is good and fair, and another has power and exploits it, is contained not only in the rhetorical verbal formula. It is also expressed graphically, in the layout of a newspaper column. The left side of the spread or the top of the column belongs to THEM, the right one or the bottom of the page belongs to US.
A tabloid plays the role of a representative of ordinary people. As a result, we get a classic drama triangle: a common man is the victim, a politician or an official is the persecutor, a tabloid is the saviour who fights for the common man, bends over his fate, or would be outraged because of the breach of ethical standards.
In connection with such a rigid structure, reality remains only a pretext to create narrations that build a bond, a community of ordinary, common people. The role of the victim lies deep in fantasies of individual persons: they find a dominant object (power, authority) who they depend on.
The tabloid audience adopts a hardened myth of democratic equality, so this group finds it difficult to accept its dependence on the authority. At the same time, though, it is not ready for independence. Social division into two main groups (classes) sets two kinds of normativity – explicit and implicit. Explicit norm is manifested in criticism towards the authority for its wealth and exploitation of ordinary people. The aim is to defend oneself against the abuse of power. On the other hand, implicit norm says: let us not change anything in ourselves. The aim is to strengthen the belief of one’s own victimhood.
The value of “normality” in the structure of oppositions and tabloid narrations can be defined in several dimensions:
(1) Stage (explicitness) – backstage
What is intentionally hidden, concealed from the people, is meanwhile genuine and sincere. Due to that, tabloids can – by focusing on these facts – convince the recipient that they only tell the truth, extracting it from hiding.
(2) Democracy (equality) – feudalism
Ridiculing “power” shows that it is not representation, but power which needs to be got back at. An occupational group of politicians or officials turns into a social class.
(3) Morality (fairness) – cynicism
If someone is an ordinary man, they are honest. If someone swaggers in a material sense, they humble us. Any decision that has a negative effect on the material situation of a common man is described as theft.
(4) Public order (commitment) – selfishness
The belief that everyone has at least two faces: the latent one is real. We, ordinary people, have nothing to hide, and the power does.
Mirosław Pęczak
Hip-hop as modern variant of oral culture
The hip-hop culture with its three main segments – music, graffiti and breakdance – is usually commented on as a catalogue of expressions relevant to postmodernism (or postmodernity).
On this occasion, it is said of hypertrophy of quotations and borrowings, of undermining the established definition of an artistic work, of anarchizing relation to a form or even of the victory of so-called small narrations.
Hip-hop in Poland proved to be a real challenge to the mainstream of popular culture, the form of which is usually extremely commercialized, and yet conformist. This is facilitated by the media technology, gaining the more and more interactive character. It is also supported by the excess of “cultural goods” sold on a global scale. The principle of “all for all” gives its way to another one – “something for everyone”.
In the mid-1990s in Poland, in a niche explored by the youth, there appeared hip-hop: sharp, lively, slightly inclined to compromise. It was an excellent opportunity for those who did not feel the best in conditions of the “rat race”, i.e. competition and consent to hierarchy determined by wealth status. Within a few years, hip-hop has become popular particularly in the provinces and among communities located at lower levels of social hierarchy. This is mirrored in the mythology of charvers, i.e. teenagers and young adults from the underclass background.
Hip-hop bands were very careful about the bond with their audience. There is usually no distance between the stage and the audience. It is the main principle, showing highly democratic and quasi-tribal nature of this music. The concert is something of a ritual where all participants are equal. Apart from that, hip-hop is music that can be performed by anybody with a little of talent.
The words flowing from the stage leave no doubt – they just fit in the everyday language used by hip-hop fans and hence, the impression that both performers and the audience have similar experiences and the same philosophy of life.
Hip-hop “street poetry” is a phenomenon of modern, highly specific oral culture. Hip-hop song lyrics contain obligatory repetitive, epic cliches, use fixed phraseological compounds. The content consists of certain themes, a kind of topoi, such as street, yard, money, fight or concert.
A specific manifestation of hip-hop culture is so-called freestyle, or improvised rap. In the early 1980s, freestyle consisted in adapting previously written rhymes to the ad hoc backing (music) tracks. Text created with rhymes played the role similar to jazz vocals. Therefore, improvisation concerned more the music than the word meaning. The most appropriate framework for improvisational performances is so-called battling, or a “hip-hop battle”, involving the rivalry of improvisers.
Orality of hip-hop is not the same what was orality of tribal cultures or old European peasant cultures. What is more, it is sometimes practiced differently by different rappers. It also has much in common with the phenomenon of secondary orality, which is the result of the electronic media primacy over writing and printing. One way or another, hip-hop rhymes are seldom inspired by literature (but do happen), instead, they reveal the impact of the Internet, as well as audio-visual and tabloid culture.
Marek Kochan
Expert, spokesman or leader? Articulation of the subject in CEO interviews
Presidents of large companies (CEOs) who speak to wide audience have at least three possibilities. They speak from the individual, strong position, expressing their opinions independently and personally; alternatively, they can speak for the entire company; finally, they can avoid both these forms, giving feedback and evaluation in the impersonal form, using the third person singular.
Using the first formula, presidents show themselves as strong and possessing executive power. Simultaneously, the choice of such a formula may involve less – in the viewer’s eyes – objectivity of opinions, as well as low level of identification with the company.
Speaking using the second position emphasizes the community character of actions and may create the image of the president as a person strongly identified with the company. A potential disadvantage of this form can be weakening the rhetorical position of the sender who loses their individuality, and becomes more a spokesman than a leader. A president also reduces their credibility, because what he or she says is spoken from the position of engagement and affiliation, in the name of the group interest.
While speaking in the third person, without conspicuous relationship with the company, the president shows the position of an observer who is independent and not involved. Such an approach can therefore be perceived as more credible and professional. At the same time, there is a risk that it will be seen as an expression of lack of identification with the company, and so it may undermine the image of the president.
Detailed analysis showed that CEOs most likely speak for the entire company rather than on their own. This highlights the community with the company, creates the image of presidents as identifying with their companies, preferring to express the common opinion rather than signal their individuality. Stronger articulation of the collective subject is often accompanied with the stronger emphasis on the individuality. Groups that strongly articulate common approach, more often speak from the individual position. And vice versa – groups less likely to emphasize the community by speaking from the common position, less often also speak from the individual position. Compared to foreigners, presidents-Poles rarely articulate individual position, and clearly seldom speak from the common position, especially taking into account CEOs of global companies.
Company owners far more often speak from the individual position, and almost as often as from the common position. Women-managers much less clearly articulate their individual and common position.
In the world of business, strong emphasis is put on the existence of a community – a company or a consortium. Collectivism is more clear than individualism – at least when it comes to the articulation of the subject. In the common approach, CEOs call into being communities that are real both for people working in these companies, and to external observers – customers, potential customers and competitors. This phenomenon is so clear that there can be no coincidence. This may be just habit or convention. Perhaps, however, this way of speaking, highly geared to creating a community, brings specific benefits to companies.
Katarzyna Kłosińska
In how many ways we talk about public issues?
The normative order in Poland after 1989 consist of pervasive and mutually influencing networks of interests and values. Thinking and speaking about the State combine two orientations: pragmatic one, treating politics as the realm of utilitarian activity, geared to doing business and performing tasks, as well as axiological one, treating politics as the set of symbolic and axiological content, recognizing the need to act in accordance with the canon of values (or at least making public declarations of commitment to the values).
These two types of attitudes towards public affairs are clear enough to prepare the ground for two ways of talking about politics, two political discourses, which are linguistic representations of these attitudes. These are ethical discourse and pragmatic discourse. According to the first type, speaking of public affairs appeals to morality, dignity, truth, honesty and justice. Ethical discourse is definitely negativistic – negative aspects of reality are exposed much more frequently than in other types of texts.
In the pragmatic discourse, each element acquires the economic dimension – main categories used to describe reality include economy and property, power and success. The community is understood primarily as a collection of individuals, “economic entities” which faces the necessity to deal with everyday economic and administrative matters. The main task of politicians is to solve these problems. The world is described rather by reference to what is good, than by exposing evil.
Each way of speaking about Poland and the role of politicians is accompanied by an attitude. When descriptions developed by sociologists and social psychologists will be given a linguistic perspective, we can note that these texts describe (usually implicitly) the State the way so-called ordinary people think. As it seems, the language analysis leads to similar conclusions as the analysis of social attitudes.
For example, if someone is convinced of their moral superiority, then, at the same time, they believe in existence of social injustice and inequality. Such an attitude is also related to the tendency to assign to authorities responsibility for their own failures, which enables politicians to locate so-called ordinary people in claiming and passive positions. As a result, ethical discourse is part of the relatively coherent way of thinking about the State. The same refers to pragmatic discourse which largely reflects the liberal doctrine. Texts constituting this discourse form the picture of people who have confidence in others and in themselves, entrepreneurial and active, not blaming authorities for their failures.
Attitudes of the first type (approximately 80 per cent) greatly prevail, while attitudes of the second type are represented by about 20 per cent of Poles. These proportions are reflected in texts – the majority of them are addressed to 80 per cent of “egalitarians”; there are also a greater number of parties using discourse which corresponds to that way of thinking (ethical discourse). The substantial minority of texts are addressed to 20 per cent of “liberals” (pragmatic discourse); there are also few parties who use this discourse.
Anna Dąbrowska
Who (was) taught Polish in the past? Where, when and why did they do so?
Foreigners have been taught Polish language for centuries. Such a phenomenon is sometimes called the assimilation force of Polish. Its effect was associated directly with the political and economic position of the State in which speaking Polish was mandatory. The language was also part of Polish culture.
From the tenth century to the eighteenth century, it is Germans who mainly desired to acquire Polish. It was caused by the German colonization of Polish territory, increasing steadily since the Middle Ages, through the Reformation times, until the influx of Germans at the time of Partitions. In the nineteenth century, the group of Polish learners significantly increased, including the Russians, Czechs, Jews and Lithuanians, and in the twentieth century – the British, Spaniards, Romanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Latvians, representatives of various nations in Africa and other continents.
Main towns and cities in which foreigners were taught Polish were situated in frontier areas inhabited by people of different origins (mainly by the Poles and Germans). In some cases, these were also areas dependent of the Republic. These centres, important economically and militarily, included: Gdansk, Torun, Konigsberg, Elbing and Wroclaw.
Polish as a foreign language was taught by very different people, usually well, though not professionally, prepared to do that. The nationality of teachers also varied: in the initial period, they were mostly Germans, Czechs and Poles. In the nineteenth century, Prussian schools were dominated by Germans. It was a deliberate procedure related with the Germanization of Prussia.
Polish as a foreign language was taught in Silesia (Wroclaw, Byczyna, Kluczbork, Wolczyn), in the Ducal and Royal Prussia (Gdańsk, Toruń, Elbing, Konigsberg), in Cracow and in Wielkopolska (Wschowa, Leszno, Poznan), but also in Leipzig and Berlin, Halle, Kiev and other cities. Teaching was carried out primarily by elementary and secondary schools (gymnasia and progymnasia), sometimes also by universities, e.g. in Konigsberg.
Polish as a foreign language was taught mainly due to the Reformation (education of preachers, teaching prayers and religious songs), increasing role of national languages, utilitarianism (need to communicate with Polish merchants and nobles), important role of Polish economy in Europe of that time, as well as strong international position of the Republic.
Motivation of learners changed along with the changes in political and economic situation of the Republic. From the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, Polish was taught for commercial, religious, prestige and cultural reasons. When Poland lost its independence, Polish was taught mainly due to invigilate Polish communities, to communicate with children who did not speak German, as well as to carry out pastoral activities.
Different kinds of books helping learn and teach Polish have been published since the sixteenth century. Until the eighteenth century, the most important publishing centres were: Wrocław, Gdansk, Torun, Olesnica, Brzeg and Leszno.
The earliest textbooks for teaching Polish as a foreign language do not clearly explain grammatical issues. Such problems were taught by giving ready-made formulas that occurred mainly in dialogues. Sometimes, elements of declension or conjugation were presented separately, but without giving any further explanation. Polish language was taught the same way as classical languages were, i.e. by syllabication, memorizing, translating and writing, and delivering speeches. As it seems, it is verbal and mental method that dominated. What is more, much attention was paid to speaking.
Władysław T. Miodunka
Polish language in the world. Teaching and testing knowledge of Polish as a foreign and second language
The vast majority of studies on the state of the Polish language at the turn of the millennium includes information about the Polish language spoken in different countries by the Poles settled there for many years.
The increase in the number of Polish schools in the United States is good news. They are established in the areas where previously there was no such demand. Over the past twenty years, the number of students in Polish schools in the United States has increased four times. However, the development of education in different educational institutions is rather uneven. There is no relationship between the size of the Polish diaspora in each state and the number of schools operating in their area.
According to ORPEG (Centre for Development of Polish Education Abroad), in May 2011, there were 339 Polish schools in 37 countries. Most Polish schools were in the following ten countries: Great Britain (82 schools), Germany (49), United States (40), Czech Republic (19), Ukraine (19), France (17), Ireland (13), Canada (12), Russia (10), and Sweden (10). This data shows the remarkable revival of Polish schools in the United Kingdom due to the emigration at the turn of the century and the migration of young Poles after Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004. On the other hand, Polish schools in Ukraine indicate the return to Polishness.
Foreign universities in which Polish as a foreign language is taught remain very prestigious places of learning Polish. Polish teachers are selected through direct competition by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, accordingly to requirements of the given university. In the academic year 2010/2011, Polish teachers worked in 37 countries around the world, in 97 schools.
Legal basis of the system of certification of Polish language was created by the amendment of the Act of the Polish Language of 11 April 2003. Certificate examinations are held at three
European levels (B1, B2, C2). During the exam, the four language skills are being verified: listening, understanding of written texts, writing and speaking (in monologue and dialogue).
Since 2000, Poland, represented by the Jagiellonian University, has been a member of the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE). Our country has been actively involved in the work of ALTE, the world’s largest association of European institutions in charge of conducting examinations and confirming the knowledge of a national language.
Throughout the history of teaching Polish as a foreign language, introducing certification in 2004 remains a very important fact, especially because both teaching and testing knowledge of Polish is considered as teaching and testing knowledge of a European language. The whole certification process is done in accordance with European standards. The importance of certification exams is significant, because apart of the new secondary school leaving examination regarding Polish as a mother tongue, it is another State examination, this time regarding Polish as a foreign language. Due to their social importance, certification exams have and will have in the future the increasing washback effect on teaching and testing knowledge of Polish as a foreign language, both in Poland and around the world.
Bożena Witosz
Scientific Polish language against postmodern methodology
Postmodernity is generally understood as questioning the tradition of modernity, made present in contemporary culture in different ways and with varying intensity. In today’s science, in the context of each discipline, postmodern style of thinking takes on specific and more or less distinct shapes. Postmodern methodology is the non-uniform and multiparadigmatic. It includes several theoretical orders, such as poststructuralism, deconstruction, neopragmatism, culturalism, cognitivism, or postmodernism.
Postmodern methodology became critical to the ideal of modern science, distinguished by the epistemological belief in decoupling scientific knowledge from any external factors. The fully autonomous scientific research was to serve knowledge of the truth, which was guaranteed by objectivity resulting from such autonomy. It was assumed that results of such an activity will have a universal character.
New methodology puts science in the wider context and treats it as one of the discourses of culture in which various social interests clash. In this light, scientific activity is always to some extent dependent on socio-historical conditions, political preferences, market needs, research funders, etc. Linking knowledge with the action of entities carrying out scientific activity and putting it in the system of social interaction and dependence (on power, authority) means that the position of science in society is no longer clear (it is not valued positively only) and constant (it no longer occupies the highest position in the social hierarchy of discourses).
Postmodern methodology contributed to loosening style, genre and composition standards in regard of scientific statements, including:
– at the level of style – blurring boundaries between scientific, academic and popular scientific style, influencing the language of science by other cultural discourses (essayization of scientific style, wordiness, colloquialization, peculiarity, excessive rhetorization);
– at the level of genre conventions – spread of mixed, “turbid” genres; expansion of essays, penetration of genres from the outside of traditional scientific statements (in academic jargon, the genre distinction is more and more rare, and is being replaced by a capacious category of “texts”);
– at the level of composition – breakdown of the closed, ternary structure (including introduction, body and conclusion) and shift towards open forms, allowing for numerous digressions and comments, loosely related to the content;
– at the level of lexis – quitting the model of formalized language in the humanities and the requirement for accuracy and style clarity in favour of tropic language, playing with the meaning and form; lack of terminology and definition clarity, increase in using jargon.
Postmodernism deserted bipolar relations and hierarchical structures. As a result, it has filled the methodological space with various minor, local theories. Thus, it also denied the existence of centre and periphery. Apart from that, categories recognized in modern times as determinants of scientific language (objectivity, accuracy, interpretability, etc.) became gradual and relative. Postmodern paradigm deprived us of any positive reference point. Its restoration requires that the scientific community focuses on building the prototype of scientific discourse that would meet demands and needs of our times.
Stanisław Dubisz
Are we threatened by the disappearance of Polish scientific language? An attempt of historical diagnose in the context of contemporary globalization processes
Scientific language is understood as a communicative and stylistic variety of Polish language, shaped by historical processes of standardization and articulated in texts aimed at scientific communication.
In the history of the Polish language, scientific discourse, which constitutes scientific language, has evolved under the influence of socio-political, cultural, educational and economic factors. Those related to the transformation of the high (intellectual) culture, isolating areas of science and technology, and formation of economic foundations of communicative community prove to be particularly important.
In general terms, the diversity of scientific disciplines refers to the diversity of research subjects, differences in research procedures and differences in description language. These differences are related with conceptual categories (which are the foundation of the structure of their content), principles of methodology (defining forms of analysis and other stages of the research), methods of interpretation (description subject and conclusions arising from it), evaluation criteria (forms of valuation and foundations of the axiological system used in reference to the results of analytical procedure). These four elements determine characteristics of scientific disciplines and specificity of their languages.
There are six basic types of Polish scientific language: language of the humanities, language of social sciences, language of mathematical sciences, language of natural sciences, language of medical sciences and language of technical sciences.
Today, the status of these groups is different because of State policy, its economic base and social prestige. For twenty years, the doctrine of priority of mathematical, natural and technical sciences have prevailed. It is thought that these sciences are to ensure our country proper place in the world science of the twenty-first century. These sciences are certainly of global reach, and their most important centres are located in the area of American and Anglo-Saxon civilization. Thus, their natural civilization language is English. Globally-oriented language policy leads to privileging English as the global language of science.
Natural, mathematical, technical and medical sciences are clearly inclined to the hegemony of internationalized scientific communication, while the realm of ethnic communication is considered less important. In contrast, however, the humanities and social sciences carry out the study of a man as the creator of culture. In spite of increasing global homogenization, culture still remains primarily ethnic.
The question is whether, in the twenty-first century, societies can exist without values and skills shaped by the humanities. If so, it may cause total globalization, disappearance of ethnic groups, elimination of local communities, hegemony of internationalized scientific communication using global (as it is believed, English) language. If not, it will bring parallel development of global community and ethnic groups, development of local and national communicative communities, as well as the global one, duplication of scientific communication using ethnic languages and internationalized global language that will gradually increase its reach in particular scientific disciplines.
Therefore, the question about the future of scientific language is the question about the future of communicative communities (including Polish communicative community – at home and in the diaspora), and about the direction of civilization development in the twenty-first century. From the historical and probabilistic point of view, however, we can assume the rationalized division of communicative functions of the Polish and foreign languages in Polish science.
Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki
Litigation as complex discourse – pragmatic aspects of language in the court
The issue of language in the court is certainly important for a lawyer. Language in the court may indeed remain one of the barriers to access justice, and therefore, it may directly affect the implementation of the rule of law as a basic constitutional principle. The component of this principle is access to justice. This does not mean access understood purely formally. Personal right regarding access to justice can be achieved only when there are no real barriers to its practical realization. Tackling language barrier requires prior diagnosis of its nature.
Judicial discourse consists of concrete realizations of speech. Linguistics of judicial discourse relates to language execution (parole, not langue). Studies of judicial discourse should strive to reproduce the structure of the discourse in the court, functions of speech which make up this discourse and their relationships. Such studies must take into account various factors that are heterogeneous to the language itself, including psychological conditions of understanding and formulating statements, as well as social and procedural determinants of their use.
The fundamental structure of legal proceedings always features a complainer, asserting a claim proffered in a suit, a defendant, against whom a claim is reported, and the court. Another participants of the judicial discourse are often agents for litigation (lawyers or legal advisers). Discourse participants usually have different linguistic and communicative competence. Thus, often, there appears a communication problem, i.e. due to the diversity of language varieties used by participants, mutual understanding can be very difficult. Main causes of these communication difficulties are associated with specific vocabulary, specific semantic rules, specific rules of presenting legal norms and specific structure of legal texts.
The most characteristic features of judicial discourse are manifested in the field of pragmatics. Issues of key importance include: style of discourse (formal style: using the third person singular, position of discourse participants determined by their procedural roles, substantial number of procedural formulas, specific way of addressing the court), topography of the courtroom and professional clothing of discourse participants (the court usually takes place on the dais, the president’s chair back is higher, either the complainer, or the defendant have their places; gowns worn by professional discourse participants visually emphasize their formal position; theatricality of the trial makes the non-professional discourse participants feel alienated), formalized discourse structure and sequence, statements always directed “to someone”, variety of speech acts (statements, questions, demands, requests, stipulations, warnings, commands, promises, proposals, etc., subject to twofold pragmatic rules: general rules of speech acts and rules of procedure).
More accurate identification of communication barriers present in the court proceedings would justify the reform of civil procedure, in order to eliminate these barriers. However, due to various other values pursued by the rules of procedure, and also due to the characteristics of substantive law, the application of which is the goal of any procedure, total removal of communication barriers seems to be rather impossible.
Irena Szczepankowska
Polish language in the legal and judicial communication in former times
In the Middle Ages, the language of literature that supported also legal and judicial communication was only Latin. Until the sixteenth century, the spoken language of civil authorities remained Polish. It was because of little knowledge of Latin among secular dignitaries and nobles who usually did not use writing and perceived speaking Latin as a shameful thing.
Polish legal terms were associated with institutions of the common law, inherited from the pre-Slavic period. Polish translations still contained little assimilated Latin words, although newly created Polish terms were probably a result of morphological tracing of Latin structures. In the Middle Ages, however, Latin did not enrich essentially Polish legal terminology.
In the sixteenth century, Polish legal language significantly improved in terms of style and precision of statements. It was caused by building up the system of legal terminology, including acquisition of Latin names. The Renaissance pattern of written language allowed for enriching Polish with foreign terms. However, before the manner of quoting Latin expressions became widespread, there was preference for Latin expressions assimilated to the Polish spelling and inflectional system.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, descriptions of litigations were written in Polish filled with Latin quotations. As it can be judged, such a manner reflected the language spoken by the nobles.
The seventeenth century and Saxon times favoured rather Latin than Polish. After two centuries of Latin dominance in public speaking and law texts created in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment abolished that “Latin fashion”. Legislators referred to the best practices of Renaissance. Lawyers were required of good knowledge of both languages.
In the nineteenth century, the importance of formal (in schools) and informal education in terms of legal culture slowly decreased. It was due to difficult situation after the Partitions of Poland, and therefore, limited possibility to actively participate in public life, including determining the shape of legislation and functioning of offices and schools. Also the language policy of foreign authorities was not conducive to strengthening Polish language in the official sphere. At that time, formal Polish language was strongly degraded and subject to greater restrictions than it was in the case of religious, scientific or literary language. Formal Polish assimilated then many German and Russian words and expressions, difficult to overcome for legislators and officials of the Second Republic.
After regaining the State in 1918, the problem was to harmonize laws and official institutions across the country, torn apart into areas subject to various political and legal systems. The renewal of official language consisted mostly in eliminating Russian and German borrowings. It is during the Second Republic when foundations of modern legal system, responding to challenges of democratic system and capitalist economy, were formed.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, increasing specialization of law goes hand in hand with progressive encapsulation of legal language. Limited communicative competence of ordinary citizens, as well as juridization and bureaucratization of all aspects of life can lead not only to individual physical and psychological losses, but may also cause effects that are detrimental to the quality of democracy and confidence in the State.
Language barriers and facilitations in communication of citizens with courts and offices
Panel discussion
Ewa Malinowska
After Poland’s accession to the European Union, we can observe changes in a model of office communication. They consist in transition from a bureaucratic model to a model based on the European administration. As far as official discourse is concerned, favourable changes were brought by the application of the European Code of Good Administrative Behaviour in Polish conditions. The Code is actually a collection of communicative strategies facilitating citizens’ daily contacts with offices. What is significant is change of communicative roles: a civil servant becomes more and more often a service provider, while a citizen becomes a customer, or even a beneficiary. Such a change of communicative roles has been reflected in the style of documents. An official plays also the role of an advisor.
Communication has gained personal character, based on the principle of dialogicality and politeness. The beginning of the twenty-first century is characterized by enhanced information activity of agencies and offices, as well as dissemination of public services provided electronically. Obstacles to communication still happen, however. They include low legal culture of citizens, lack of common knowledge of law and legal language. One of the ways to overcome difficulties in communication in the office may be legal education of citizens. Apart of that, linguistic and stylistic competence of officials is still unsatisfactory.
Maciej Strączyński
The first source of mistakes and obscurity occurring in legal language is vague wording of the legislature, sometimes reminiscent of newspeak. Some other time, law is simply not complied with. This relates for example to the rule of transliteration of Eastern European alphabets. Another group of incomprehensible phrases are terms of legal theory. Yet most errors in legal language terminology result from mindless, mechanical duplication of phrases heard from other lawyers. Another undesirable feature of legal language is escape from inflection of proper names. What is more, legal language includes unnecessary foreign terms, as well as wrongly used colloquial or slang words.
Unfortunately, classes of culture of language for law students are rather scarce. Some years ago, a preliminary exam to study law did included Polish language. It is no longer like that. When oral exams were replaced by written ones, law students lost the ability to use correct language. Earlier, when they made linguistic mistakes during oral exams, most examiners instinctively corrected them. At the moment, grammatical mistakes in written works are neither marked, nor criticized. What counts is only content and knowledge.
The system of written examinations or multiple-choice tests is now becoming popular in law corporations – those of barristers and of legal advisers. Only the judicial examination has always been oral. In the case when the classical legal training was liquidated and the Polish National School of Judiciary and Public Prosecution was called into being, some worrying changes may occur also in this regard.
Marek Zirk-Sadowski
The necessary condition for citizens’ communication with the court in legal proceedings is having legal communicative competence, including the ability to use the pragmatic rules that determine the structure of this discourse. This problem is particularly visible in cassation proceedings.
The level of professionalism of legal language required at this stage of litigation does not allow a party who is not a lawyer to have direct language contact with the court. The appeal should not only cite bases of cassation, but should also contain their justification. The cassation appeal not conforming to these requirements does not allow the court to assess its relevance.
Legal discourse, at least at the stage of considering the relevance of the appeal and the substance of its allegations, takes place during a debate of lawyers, often specialized in a particular area of law. From the perspective of discourse structure and competence requirements, this situation cannot be affected significantly, because that would be dangerous for the purposes set by the Constitution for administrative jurisdiction.
An institution that fights with the lack of communicativity in litigation is the Human Rights Defender. His constant struggle for the reduction of communicative barriers between courts and society deserves attention and support.
Radoslaw Pawelec
In the last two decades, Polish linguistics has developed new theoretical approach to the language norm and new research methods concerning this issue. Language norm was also codified. What is yet of utter importance for the shape of democracy, civil society and efficiency of the State is legal language, (mostly) remaining out of the reach of systematic linguistic research and linguistic proposals for standardization.
As a result, legal and official records abound in several disagreements, in some cases regarding quite basic things, related to spelling and punctuation. Legal texts are also grammatically and lexically imperfect.
Changing this state of affairs requires cooperation between lawyers and linguists, and systematic, modern linguistic reflection on the legal language. It should result in joint research projects and specialist normative publications intended for lawyers and civil servants. Apart from that, we need some popular scientific studies, facilitating the practical use of correct forms of legal language.
Agnieszka Choduń
The key issue is the form of communication between a court or an office and a citizen or another non-institutional entity. Lawyers know that to understand the content of a legal act, they should first reconstruct legal norms encoded by the legislature. To understand the content of the legislation, communicative competence is necessary. The legislature makes the law assuming that the one who will interpret it has communicative competence assigned to a lawyer. We cannot expect that legislative texts will be universally understood, and certainly they will not be understood as far as norms are concerned.
Communication between a court or an office and a citizen is institutionalized, formalized and conventionalized, which is decided by the legislature who includes in the legislation norms of conduct in a certain case. The degree of formality of this communication is also determined by its form (oral or written). It may also result from officials’ activity who prepare appropriate forms through which communication takes place at the office. Because of their informal status they are, of course, non-binding.
Jan Grzenia
What does Polish language owe to the Internet? Example of the vocabulary
The Internet has changed all the languages in the world, mostly those using letters. Internet communication is very diverse, even more than traditional communication based on writing, which makes it difficult to formulate generalizations about the Internet language. We can distinguish at least three types of Internet communication: conversational variety (chatting in rooms or via instant messaging), correspondence variety (emails, discussion groups and message boards), and hypertext variety (websites, blogs).
Spelling changes caused by the Internet are glaringly apparent. In this way, moreover, there may appear phonetic changes. Spelling peculiarities are usually most frequently mentioned as examples of the impact of the Internet on language, because they are easy to see. The research of this issue is quite convenient, because it is based on comparative analysis of variously spelled records. Main differences concern deviations from ordinary spelling which may be intentional, or unintentional and unconscious (mistakes). From the linguistic perspective, however, all such variations are significant. At least, there is only a problem of their interpretation. Spelling deviations include: using capital or small letters, omitting Polish diacritic marks, shortening words and phrases, reordering characters, replacing ordinary spelling marks with the other characters.
Grammatical changes are not as spectacular, but still interesting. We can see that due to the Internet, some processes in the Polish inflection accelerated (e.g. tendency to inflect inanimate masculine nouns the way animate nouns are inflected). What is more, the Internet increases the influence of colloquial speech on general language, and thus, applied Polish norm becomes model one. The syntax shows such strong influence of spoken language, hence, simple sentence structures are definitely preferred.
The style of Internet texts shows considerable dependence on colloquial speech. It is yet typical for language communication in the last twenty years, popular on the radio and television. In terms of pragmatics, Internet communication turns out to be extremely rich. There are some forms of communication that were in fact not previously known. They include written chats, both personal and public, as well as blogs.
The Internet has changed much in the vocabulary. This involves not only the whole lexicon and verbal combinations, but also some significant new words. The “Internet vocabulary” consists of electronic addresses, Internet aliases (nicknames), emoticons, and abbreviations. Typical vocabulary related to the Internet, already quoted in dictionaries, includes dozens of new words, i.e. the noun “Internet” along with its derivatives and synonyms, words denoting use of the Internet, as well as its various components and tools.
The vast majority of the Internet words are of Polish origin. They clearly dominate over foreign ones. What is more, they quickly and spontaneously replace words of foreign origin. Polish language owes to the Internet a few new words which at any rate are Polish. Indeed, it is distinctive and interesting that in the computer vocabulary (not just the one related to the Internet), foreign words quickly subside domestic ones. Borrowings are maintained only in jargon or specialized varieties of language, but they also quickly become polonized.
Wojciech Kajtoch, Rafal Kuś
Minority and foreign languages. Their status, teaching and use in the media in contemporary Poland
In the majority of independent and ethnically homogeneous countries, foreign languages may occur in the threefold character: (1) they may be spoken by minority groups, (2) they may be subject of teaching and research, (3) they may be used in everyday activity, e.g. at work or in the media. The first case refers to languages spoken by immigrants residing in Poland or to languages of officially recognized national minorities and ethnic groups. Protecting and encouraging development of such minority or regional languages is regulated by law.
A minority language is defined as a language spoken traditionally by a minority of the population of a country, different from the official language of that country. The Polish legislature recognizes the Belarusian, Czech, Lithuanian, German, Armenian, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian and Jewish minority groups in Poland. Meanwhile, Crimean Karaites, Lemkos, Romani and Tatars are ethnic minorities.
A regional language is the one traditionally spoken on the territory of a country by its residents, who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the population of that country. It is also different from the official language of that country and does not include either dialects of the official language, or languages of migrants. In Polish legislature, only Kashubian language was granted status of a regional language.
Polish is the official language in Poland. This means that entities performing public tasks act and make statements in Polish. The Polish language is also used in trade and in labour law. Polish is the language of instruction in public and private schools. Notices and information in offices, public institutions and public transportation should be also written in the Polish.
Knowledge of foreign languages is the ability that more and more Poles use every day: in practice, in dealing with foreign cultural objects, or in contacts with foreigners. The most common reasons indicated by the Poles for learning foreign languages include: improving career prospects, tourism, desire to understand languages spoken in the world and in Europe, curiosity about the living conditions of people in other countries. The most useful is the command of English and German, as well as Russian, French, Spanish and Italian.
Accurate data regarding the use of foreign languages at work is rather difficult to obtain. Similarly, the entrance of foreign languages to the Polish media is also elusive. On the other hand, articles written in foreign languages are being published in Polish scientific journals.
English is certainly the most expansive language. However, it is hard to assess to which extent the use of English can bring to Polish scientists worldwide popularity. English is preferred primarily by economic and business journals, by those covering technology and computers, and those regarding natural sciences. German is used especially as far as specific regions or literature and art are concerned, while Russian is proper for the Slavic writing and culture.