Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część I. Dobroć. Etnolingwistyka, 23, 45-66.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część II. Prawość i odwaga. Etnolingwistyka, 24, 19-46.
Written in Polish.
Part I deals with the Polish word dobroć in comparative perspective. An assumption is made that an especially precious source of insight into the values of a given society are the key words used in that society. One of such words in Polish society is dobroć. By analysing the word’s semantics, the author shows the differences between that word and its closest equivalents in a few European languages: the English goodness, the French bonté or the Russian dobrotá. In the Polish hierarchy of values, dobroć ranks high as a positive human feature, manifested in people’s feelings, will and actions. The English goodness (derived from the adjective good) differs from the Polish dobroć in that it does not imply good feelings towards other people. The French bonté, in turn, although used in reference to people who want to do and actually do good things for others, does not, in contrast to dobroć, imply emotional overtones. On the other hand, the Russian dobrotá differs from dobroć in that it is primarily used in reference to someone’s emotional attitude towards others (expressed in one’s facial appearance or the tone of voice) but not actions. The author hypothesizes that bonté does not contain the emotional component (present in dobroć), and that dobrotá does not contain the element of action (present in dobroć and bonté). Neither does dobrotá occupy a central position among Russian values: that place is reserved for žalost’, an axiological category without a Polish equivalent. Similarly, in contemporary English-speaking cultures, greater importance is attached to kindness than to goodness.
Having discussed the semantics of dobroć, the author inquires into the historical and cultural origin of the associated concept and attempts to explain its uniqueness. A hypothesis is put forward that in Polish culture the attitude of the heart and will, reflected in the concept of ‘goodness’, finds its prototype in the figure of the Virgin Mary.
In Part II, the author analyses the concepts prawość ‘righteousness’ and odwaga ‘courage’.
Prawość is a specifically Polish concept, very much present in the Polish linguistic and cultural contemporary sphere. It is connected with the history of the country and the qualities attributed to major historical figures. Being prawy means being sensitive to others and following high ethical standards, which perhaps derives from the knightly ethos. English pseudo-equivalents of the Polish prawy/prawość are the words upright, righteous/righteousness and integrity. However, the word upright is now perceived by native speakers of English as dated and inadequate in the contemporary world; righteous and righteousness have clear biblical connotations and have entered the English language through Puritan morality – hence their range is limited. The closest equivalent is integrity, although the word is more readily connected with one’s social activity than with morality.
Odwaga is also connected with moral choices (cf. odwaga cywilna ‘moral courage’) but is not the same as courage: if someone is odważny, the deed may have negative consequences for the doer, which courage does not presuppose. The same semantic field contains words like śmiałość, dzielność and męstwo ‘boldness, bravery, valour’, but these also differ in their semantics from the English courage. Bravery is only an approximate to śmiałość, as is the Russian mužestvo, which merely resembles męstwo.
The cognitive scripts of the Polish value terms show clearly that speakers of Polish in each case operate with elements of awareness (“being aware of the moral obligation to act as one should”).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
