Permanence and changeability of a linguistic fashion - Fifty years after Danuta Buttler's publication

Authors:

• Anna Piotrowicz,
• Małgorzata Witaszek-Samborska

Abstract

The lapse of half a century from the publication of the first theoretical paper on fashionable words by Danuta Buttler in "Przeglad Humanistyczny" inspired the authors of this paper to examine this cultural and linguistic phenomenon in terms of its permanence // changeability from the contemporary perspective. The comparison of words considered fashionable a few dozen years ago (by Danuta Buttler in her paper and handbook of linguistic culture of Polish and by editors of Słownik poprawnej polszczyzny [Dictionary of Polish usage] of 1973 - by Witold Doroszewski and Halina Kurkowska) with lexemes codified as fashionable today (by Andrzej Markowski - the author of a new handbook of linguistic culture of Polish for students and the editor of Wielki słownik poprawnej polszczyzny [Great dictionary of Polish usage]) led to conclusions about the permanence of the linguistic fashion phenomenon, the media being the major source of popularising this fashion (however, with a change of the lexical register into the colloquial one), the necessity to review the linguistic nomenclature (the term fashionable meanings instead of fashionable words) and the need to develop instruments objectivising the intuitive observations made to date.