Jerzy Owsiak's Linguistic Means of Persuasion

Abstract

The fact that the influence of words on man is effective has been used for centuries. Today Jerzy Owsiak undoubtedly belongs to those people who can stir the crowds with their words. The aim of the article is an attempt at giving an answer to the question of the essence of Jerzy Owsiak's language and of those features of it that elicit the recipients' strong response. Actual television, radio and press utterances and interviews are the material for the study. In the first paragraph of the article a discussion is presented of the issues connected with the communication situation in which the utterances were given, as analysis of the persuasive role of the language is impossible without taking into consideration its context. Attention has been especially focused on the effect of particular elements of the communication (sender, recipient, code) on persuasiveness of the language. The second paragraph is an attempt to analyze particular linguistic means. It includes a discussion of persuasive means on the syntactic level (construction of such elements of the utterance as subject and verb as well as the function of repetitions). A further part of the second paragraph is a consideration of the function of lexical-semantic means of persuasion (expressive means and hyperboles as well as means characterizing the individual language, such as colloquial words, ones borrowed from the youth slang, euphemisms, vulgarisms, slogans and mottoes).