High Culture on Duty or Mythology-Based Expressions in Contemporary Styles and Varieties of Polish The purpose of this article is to outline the stylistic and varietal extent of mythology-based expressions (of Graeco-Roman provenance), which include mythologically motivated linguistic units with varying formal (single words and polywords) and semantic (primary and secondary meanings) status. Due to their conventional origin, these units primarily belong to the literary variety of Polish. Additionally, they form the basis of numerous academic terms. To a much lesser degree, they also serve as fodder for other speech genres, styles and varieties of Polish that are conditioned by present-day cultural, civilizational and communicative changes, realized, for instance, in the language of journalists, internet users, public figures, manufacturers or owners of commercial and service facilities. The expressions in question are used in texts that differ stylistically, where they perform not only denotative-connotative but also axiological and expressive functions. Kultura wysoka na służbie, czyli o mitologizmach we współczesnych stylach i odmianach polszczyzny Celem niniejszego opracowania jest próba pokazania stylistycznego i odmianowego zasięgu mitologizmów (o grecko-rzymskiej proweniencji), do których można zaliczyć motywowane mitologicznie jednostki języka o różnym statusie formalnym (jedno- i wielowyrazowe) i semantycznym (o znaczeniu prymarnym i wtórnym). Jednostki te ze względu na swe konwencjonalne źródło przynależą przede wszystkim do książkowej odmiany polszczyzny. Dodatkowo, stały się one także podstawą wielu terminów naukowych. W nieznacznym stopniu zasilają też inne, warunkowane współczesnymi zmianami kulturowo-cywilizacyjnymi i komunikacyjnymi gatunki mowy, style i odmiany polszczyzny, realizujące się choćby w języku dziennikarzy, czynnych internautów, osób publicznych, producentów czy właścicieli obiektów usługowo-handlowych. Mitologizmy używane są zatem w tekstach o różnej stylistyce. Pełnią w nich funkcje nie tylko denotacyjno-konotacyjne, lecz także m.in. aksjologiczne i ekspresywne.
The subject to be presented and described in the present paper are word combinations with mythological (Graeco-Roman) origins occurring in eight crime novels penned by Marek Krajewski, taking the shape of: (i) better or less known phrasemes, or conventional petrified multiword units reproduced in a communicative act to express particular intentions and intensions; (ii) phrasematic innovations, or phrasemes modified formally and/or semantically and used against the grain of the phraseological norm; or (iii) literary nonce phrasemes, that is multiword units created ad hoc for the purposes of style and world depiction, containing eponyms and eponymisms of mythological origin which exist in Polish. The proposed examination of conventional (the titular convention), innovative, and nonce (the titular invention) units used in the excerpted crime novels is of a qualitative and functional nature, since its focus is on an attempt to point out and discuss the functions which the selected examples serve in the literary messaging. Polyword mythology-based expressions fulfil numerous and various (often at the same time) functions in M. Krajewski’s crime novels, incl. cultural-identitarian, content-focused, expressive, evaluative, aesthetic and others.
The article aims to present whether and how the phraseme to be reborn || rise (like a Phoenix / phoenix) from the ashes exists today in various texts of culture (recorded after 2000 in the National Corpus of Polish, drawn from the web and elsewhere), how it is present in various registers of communication and whether this petrified lexical unit is undergoing any changes. The analysis is preceded by a cultural introduction into understanding the symbolic power of Phoenix hidden in the phrase, as well as the insights into the systemic (lexicographic) state of the expression and the attempt to establish its source and the approximate time in which it was created.
The article falls within the chrematonomastic research strand in which a proper name is understood to be a utilitarian message with a pragmatic potential, one that ensues from both statutory requirements and marketing rules. The focus is on the topic of auspicious economic entity names and especially their constituents – lexical units that are supposed to make the name and entity stand out in the market, yet should not be misleading as to what the company’s scope of activity is. The names of firms and premises with the mythological firmonym Hades from various sectors (147 items) from all over Poland, sourced from Panorama Firm, a large business directory, were examined. Quantitatively, the collated material shows that most marketing chrematonyms with this component can be found in the funeral sector, as accounted for by the funeral and thanatological connotations the mythological lexeme evokes by way of its cultural meaning. Much more seldom, name coiners from various sectors (incl. textile, hotel, building, transport, automobile companies) employ the word as well, rendering firmonym-using identification possibly difficult, misleading or nigh on impossible.
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