O warzywnych określeniach ludzi niemądrych i zachowujących się niewłaściwie jako przyczynek do językowo-kulturowego obrazu warzyw w polszczyźnie

Abstract

VEGETABLE EXPRESSIONS DENOTING FOOLISH AND MISBEHAVING PEOPLE AS A CONTRIBUTION TO THE LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL IMAGE OF VEGETABLES IN THE POLISH LANGUAGE

The subject of the article is the names of vegetables which secondarily become insults, that is, they are referred to people who are negatively evaluated due to stupidity and improper behaviour. It is interesting to point out why, among plants, it is vegetables that are used most often in this function. In the first part of the article the author collects and briefly describes the most important elements of the linguistic and cultural image of vegetables in the Polish language for this topic, and in the second part the author characterises the vegetable forms used in the contemporary insulting description of a person: kapuściana głowa [cabbage head], głąb [cabbage heart], burak [beetroot], cebulak [onion-man], kartofel [potato]. The author presents the length of their functioning in Polish and their popularity reflected in the number of derivatives. Also, the author attempts to indicate why they are the ones associated with stupidity and lack of culture, and to what extent it is due to the linguistic and cultural image of vegetables or to other current socio-cultural transformations.