The aim of this paper is to make an attempt to determine the status of language in the ad- ministrative-legal language communication sphere and a proposal for an intemal diffe- rentiation of this variety of Polish.The author supports the tradition of using the name administrative variant as the one of higher order to all the expressions servicing this sphere, and to distinguish within its scope the following: the legał subvariant as the central one (law is the broadest framework of administrative activities), the office subvariant and the rhetoric subvariant. Each of them may have a further differentiation depending on the assumed criteria.
The aim of this paper is to indicate the most important elements of the communicative and cultural context, which exert influence on the official discourse in Poland.Initially, the Roman culture had strongly influenced the shaping of the Polish official discourse; after this, it was the culture of the countries that partitioned Poland, and nowadays, especially after Poland’s accession to the European Union, it is the AngloSaxon culture. The influences of these cultures may be seen in the genre templates of the official documents, as well as in the broadening of the communicative roles and inthe changes of the relations between the discourse subjects. The adoption of the concept of good governance, i.e., the administration which is friendly to citizens and different entities, is of considerable significance in the adjustment of Polish offices to the EU standards.
In the office world time runs in a different way than in the world. of colloquial expe- rience. Untargeted texts (legał texts) project futurę events; therefore a considerable num- ber of office utterances is formed in a futurę tense. In legał utterances there is actually only a relative time i.e. as far as time is concemed, an event may be presented only in re- ference to a different event and time period between them, and not through a datę (an ab- solute time moment). The absolute time appears only in the regulations determining the datę when a given legał act comes into force.On the other hand, in office letters, the absolute time (the calendar time) dominates, which is connected with a documenting function of these texts. Time dating is connected with factography and further proceedings. Time deixis is expressed in the form of nume- rals indicating a day, a month and a year, or in the form of adverbs (e.g. immediately, promptly etc.)