Volume 07, Winter 1982

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The forms of address in contemporary Polish
(University of Calgary, 1982-01) Tuszynska, Wanda E
In this paper we will attempt to describe the forms of address in present-day Polish and the patterning of their usage. Having no access to sources which could verify our hypotheses, we have thus based our judgments on intuition and experience alone. Therefore, our description will by no means be complete and well-documented.Taking into consideration the political status quo of Poland one could naively expect the address forms to be fairly homogeneous, with a solidarity pronoun being extensively used. In an allegedly unstratified society, the dominance of the deferential forms of address over solidarity pronouns would seem surprising to the early Marxist-Leninist ideologist. Moreover, some instances of nonreciprocal forms of address are encountered. It is our desire to show that the Polish system of address employs an extreme variety of forms and their usage is ruled by quite a complicated "code" (or set of rules). Furthermore, we wish to cast some light on the interdependence of the Polish system of address and the socio-political pattern. The observed phenomena will entitle us to put forward a hypothesis that politically induced changes do not necessarily affect social attitudes (as expressed in language).