Precedent Units in Polish and Ukrainian Media Texts

Abstract

The article investigates the linguistic specificity of the actualization of precedent phenomena – specific linguistic elements that are closely related to the cognitive base of the ethnic group and reflect the idea of phenomena, events and facts that are important for a certain community – in Polish and Ukrainian media discourses, their suggestive potential. The relevance is due to the insufficient coverage of the described problem in Polish linguistics and the need for a comparative analysis of units used by speakers of both languages. The goal is to identify and compare the features of the use of the mentioned phenomena in Polish and Ukrainian media texts.

It was found that precedent units are most often found in the headlines of news and journalistic materials, on historical portals, as well as in blogs. This pattern is quite logical, because the title performs a key function – it attracts the reader’s attention and encourages them to familiarize themselves with the main text. The use of recognizable cultural markers in the title expresses the mood of the publication, activates the necessary associations and sets the tone chosen in advance by the addressee even before reading the material itself. This is especially noticeable in texts with a socio-political connotation, where titles with precedent phenomena often serve as a mechanism for comparison, assessment, criticism or humorous play with established ideas. The tendencies of appeal and the functions of units in Polish and Ukrainian texts are generally similar, which can be explained by the fact that both languages belong to the same Slavic group of the Indo-European language family, albeit to different subgroups: Polish is a West Slavic language, while Ukrainian is an East Slavic language. Thus, such common features as grammatical similarity, syntactic proximity, cultural affinity are highlighted. The proximity of the two countries is also important, which affects the historical context. Close contacts between the Polish and Ukrainian languages form the basis for further research into the use of precedent units in them, including in a comparative aspect.