The word emancypacja (emancipation) in Polish is a 14th-century borrowing from Latin. It was used to refer to the process of gaining freedom and independence by various people and social groups, in particular peasants, Jews and women in the Poland of that time. The lexeme is recorded and accurately described in dictionaries, which also point to a special position of emancipation of women among emancipation processes: it concerned the largest number of people and assumed the form of a decades-long and complex process. The quotations collected in the Files of Słownik języka polskiego (Dictionary of Polish) edited by W. Doroszewski prove the power and diversity of emancipation movements and permit the reconstruction of the controversies behind emancipation of women. Nowadays, the words from this nest can be seen mainly in books and are often used in historical contexts. The current problems related to the question of women’s status are referred to with words from the feminism nest, some of which are similar to and others different from emancipation.
The lexis related to physical disability belongs to the scopes of vocabulary which have undergone significant changes over ages. This regards the structure of the field, the number of units and their correlations, and the valuation ascribed to them. This paper presents the history of lexemes connected with motor, visual and auditory disabilities, as well as words referring to the disabled in general. The text ends with reflections about the concept of disability in the contemporary Polish and English language and possibility to define it (with historical data taken into account), as well as various values associated with disabilities.
Until the end of the 18th century, the word niepodległy (independent) was rarely used in Polish and had a slightly different meaning than it has today. The semantic change occurs after the loss of independence, which is also the period when the noun niepodległość (independence), which refers to the political independence of a state, comes into use. Old and new semantic elements are present in both words over successive decades of the 19th century as the development process of a new meaning is quick: it takes one generation. Axiological phenomena are equally dynamic; in the romanticists’ world of values independence is ranked very high. Its devaluation, which can be noticed in some utterances and statements from the past three decades, is a slow process and it does not seen to infl uence the semantics of the word or its functioning in the language.
This paper presents an analysis of the usages of words from the nest (hatred) in the works by Jan Kochanowski against the semantic development of these words in Polish. Their original etymological meaning is related to seeing someone unwillingly, disliking someone. In the Old and Middle Polish periods, they were used fairly often, but the usages were different from the present ones: many of them had a less negative meaning than they do in Modern Polish. It was shaped after the 16th century, yet the beginnings of the process are assumed to go back to the century of the last Jagiellons. The author formulates a hypothesis that Jan Kochanowski, who noticed the trend in the semantics of the words from the nest , restricted their usage in his works only to the translations of the Old Testament psalms, consciously not referring them to the contemporary interpersonal relationships.
This paper presents three texts regarding erotic behaviours: from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Their interpretation in the works by historians of literature and manners is subjected to a critical reflection aiming to show that inattentive or unskilful reading of the language of an old text or perception of old behaviours from the perspective of the contemporary culture leads to distortions and misunderstanding. As a result, evaluations of the same phenomena and behaviours are completely different, which prevents understanding and acceptance of the specificity of the world of the past.