The model of religiosity, having been remained traditional for a very long time, seems to be changing at present due to the specific combination of cultural factors – popculture, relativization of values, commercialization, technological revolution being the most influential. As the evidence of the phenomenon inscriptions put on such personal belongings as T-shirts and gadgets can serve. The article analyses them as a way of manifesting the religious attitude of their users. As far as T-shirts are concerned there are a few strategies employed: communicating the person’s association with events, places and people, indicating group with which one identificates themselves, direct declaring of faith, communicating one’s life situations as being the consequence of faith in God, evangelising the receiver, preaching the Word of God including. Verbal messages found on gadgets are less varied and most traditional, the most typical being the Bible quotation. In both the groups the tendency of breaking the convention of seriousness and introducing the joke (quite often by a graphic element as contrasting with the verbal one) can be seen. It is just this phenomenon, together with introducing non-Biblical English, that seem to be the most modern formal features of manifesting religiosity in the contemporary times. Religious attitude, as manifested by the inscriptions on personal belongings is the evidence of the influence of popculture on such a strongly traditionally tabooed sphere as religion is.
The author of the article discusses the name of the food product MAKARą in the context of unlimited rights of proper names. According to the traditional view, a proper name denotes only and has no meaning, although this theory is undermined in the light of new linguistic phenomena. Lots of chrematonyms has also an advertising function, some of them basing on appelatives and being created in such a way the relation between an appeletive and a proper name could be readable. This is in case of MAKARą derived from makaron (English noodle) with the transforming of spelling and pronunciation. Regardless of whether the pragmatic effect of the name is successful, from the point of view of the system of Polish language the name brings a lot of trouble. It is not accentuated in accordance with the rules of Polish stress and it cannot be inflected. Its form does not allow to decide about its grammatical gender unamibiguously and when spelt according to the Polish spelling rules {Makarą), loses its advertising power. There is also an ethical aspect of the discussed name - because of its deceptive form, namely the ending -ą. It can have bad influence on the correctness of language. This is because there are specific troubles connected with the pronunciation and spelling of nasal vowels and the group consisting of a vowel and a nasal consonant and the mistakes in this area are still common. The example of the name discussed prompts the author to reflect on whether creating proper names should be at least in some way restricted.
Pomyłka językowa polskiego ministra spraw zagranicznych Witolda Waszczykowskiego, który w styczniu 2017 wymienił wśród państw Ameryki Środkowej San Escobar, wywołała w Internecie falę żartów, które przerodziły się w zbiorową zabawę mającą na celu szczegółowe wykreowanie nieistniejącego państwa. Między innymi opracowana została mapa kraju, na której znalazło się około 300 żartobliwych nazw własnych, zawierających w większości czytelne odwołania semantyczne. Autorki analizują w artykule tę grupę nazw, która zawiera odwołania do polskiej polityki: postaci, cytatów, haseł i politycznych tematów, pokazując, w jaki sposób tworzenie nazw
EN
A language mistake of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski, who in January 2017 listed San Escobar among the states of Central America, triggered a wave of jokes on the Internet which turned into a collective play aimed at the detailed creation of a non-existent state. Among other things, a map of the country was developed. There are almost 300 playful proper names on the map, most of them containing legible semantic references. In the article, the authors analyze the group names which include references to Polish politics: characters, quotes, slogans and political themes, showing how the creation of the names became a way of expressing a mocking and critical attitude towards the current governing authorities.
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