The paper focuses on the semantic analysis of lexical borrowings of English origin used in informal spoken Polish. The study is based on the corpus, collected and analyzed by the present author. First, general information is given about the corpus, followed by the description of the methodological problems associated with studying lexical loans in spoken language. The main part of the paper focuses on the description of the loans found in the corpus. Special attention is paid to the newest borrowings, not noted in the dictionaries of Polish and/or dictionaries of foreign terms.

The aim of the present study, set in the Polish-English context, is to discuss to what extent, if any, L1 competence (semantic, phraseological and grammatical) is influenced by the language contact, understood here as the (advanced) knowledge of L2, i.e. English. The research is based on the questionnaire consisting of 23 short excerpts taken from newspaper articles or texts published on the Internet, adapted by the author of the article. The texts in the questionnaire contain various kinds of borrowings and calques from English, such as semantic loans, loan translations (new phrases, collocations or idiomatic expressions) and grammatical constructions modelled on English. The questionnaire was given to two groups of informants: the main group (i.e. the bilingual one), consisting of 4th year students of English at the University of Silesia enrolled in the teaching programme, and the control group, consisting of students of various fields (excluding English or Polish studies) who declared limited knowledge of English. The respondents from both groups were given the questionnaire and their task was to read the sentences carefully and then to decide whether some words or phrases seemed incorrect or unnatural in a given context. The study has corroborated the view that language contact has some repercussions at the individual level: the knowledge of L2 may and does influence L1 competence. Not all the areas (semantic, phraseological and grammatical), however, are affected to an equal extent.

The aim of the present study, set in the Polish-English context, is to discuss the lexical infl uence of English upon the Polish names of professions. The analysis is based on the offi cial list of professions in Polish, compiled by the Polish Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. The loans are classifi ed into different groups, with various criteria taken into account: they are classified (1) according to the time of their fi rst occurrence in Polish (the criterion here is based on their existence or non-existence in two dictionaries, one of general Polish, i.e. Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego, and one of English borrowings in Polish, i.e. Słownik zapożyczeń angielskich w polszczyźnie); (2) according to the place in which a given borrowing is used (in the very name of the profession or in its peripheral parts) and (3) according to the function of a given borrowing (functioning as the only name of the profession or as an additional name, parallel to the Polish one). Additionally, the roles of the English borrowings in the names of professions are analyzed.

The paper focuses on the analysis of the lexical borrowings of English origin used in the Polish language of Internet message boards. First, general information is given about typical features of the language used in Internet texts, followed by the summary of various understandings of the term ‘borrowing’. The main part of the paper focuses on the description of the loans found in the texts taken from Internet message boards. Both the differences between individual users as well as between different topics of conversation (i.e. context) are taken into account. Finally, the findings of the present analysis are compared with those for the spoken spontaneous Polish (Zabawa 2006) and the Polish language of hip-hop songs (Bartłomiejczyk 2008).

The aim of the present paper is to discuss metaphorical constructions, based on figurative uses of words, in informal Polish in the field of computers and the Internet. The study is based on the author’s own corpus, compiled on the basis of short informal texts (entries, posts) written on 32 selected Internet forums. Altogether, the corpus consists of 1,541,449 words. The paper, as the title suggests, focuses on one metaphorical formula, i.e. COMPUTERS ARE BUILDINGS. The metaphors which can be subsumed under this heading belong to the most frequent in the corpus (alongside a different type, i.e. COMPUTERS ARE HUMANS). They are discussed within the cognitive framework, as introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Some attention will also be devoted to the possible infl uence of English upon Polish metaphorical constructions used in the area of computers and the Internet.

The aim of the paper is to explore metaphorical expressions used in informal Polish in the area of computers and the Internet. The study is based on a corpus, compiled and analyzed by the present author; the corpus consists of short informal texts (entries) taken from Polish Internet message boards devoted to computers and the Internet. Altogether, the corpus comprises around 1,500,000 words. The metaphors found in the corpus will be discussed within the cognitive framework. Special attention will be devoted to one of the most frequent conceptual metaphors found in the corpus, namely COMPUTERS ARE HUMANS, or, to be more precise, BADLY WORKING COMPUTER IS A SICK PERSON. Some place will also be devoted to the infl uence of English on metaphorical expressions (in the domain of computers and the Internet) in Polish.