POZDRAWIAM ZE ŚWIĘTEM! O ŻYCZENIACH „PO WILEŃSKU”
Pozdrawiam ze świętem! ( Merry Christmas!) On greetings in the Polish language in Vilnius

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with differences in the code of politeness in the Polish language found in Lithuania. I have identified expressive acts of speech (greetings, congratulations) in local Polish saturated with Russian and Lithuanian patterns. They are in use even among those Poles who speak standard Polish on an everyday basis. Lithuanian and Russian syntax templates that appear in the context of official or semi-official formal speech are also used in the written form of the Polish language in Lithuania (e.g. Pozdrawiam ze Świętem (Merry Christmas), where the Polish standard is Wesołych Świąt). The notion “cultural scenarios of thinking” is used while analysing the content of such speech acts. I indicate the difficulty of learning the code of politeness in schools: the examples for my material were collected from websites of Polish secondary schools in Lithuania and other places of official Polish discourse where deviations from the standard Polish code of politeness are detected. It can be stated that Poles in Lithuania express their greetings in Polish by using forms of politeness from the Russian and Lithuanian languages.

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