Banalne czy osobliwe? (o imionach w slangu studenckim)

Abstract

The subject of an analysis in this paper are names that occurred in dialogues between students of eight universities in Krakow: AGH. ASP, UJ, WSP, AE, AR, AM, and AWF. Research material was gathered by participants in a linguistic seminar conducted by Prof. Maria Zarębina in the years 1996-2002. 307 personal nouns were examined in all where 59 official (certificate) names were used 242 times, 152 diminutives were used 667 times, and 96 nick- names and cognomens were used 243 times. Certificate names have different origins (Slavonic, Latin, Greek, French, Aramaic, Hebrew, German, Hungarian, Italian) and in texts they form dialogues performing first of all the following functions: identifying, informative, distinguishing, indicating ones and they rarely express emotional attitudes of the senders (expressive, phatic, addressing functions). In students' dialogues personal names in diminutive forms perform mainly functions similar to these that were distinguished in the analysis of certificate names but the predominant elements here are as follows: phatic, addressing, emotional, often with a tinge of humour. Because of using diminutives and hypocoristics a tone, e.g. pejorative, of voice is well-founded and an utterance is considerably softened. In sum indifferent emotional meaning predominates (similarly to certificate names). Personal names of people, who are present during a conversation, are always in positive expressive meaning. A pejorative tinge of meaning appears rarely and can be recognized mainly on the basis of context. Nick-names and cognomens are the most expressive in character. Because of them a text becomes an interesting and original one. In the gathered material there were as many nick-names and cognomens as certiftcate names.