Professor Patryk Borowiak is among the few Slavists in Poland who have analyzed and described the linguistic cityscape. - "I study the cityscape through all the senses to ensure that later when reading about the city, you can sense its atmosphere," says the researcher, who carries out projects in Sofia, New York, and Warsaw.
Patryk Borowiak is a Slavist and Polish scholar dealing with onomastics, i.e. the study of proper names. His scientific passion began to grow in his childhood. Instead of playing ball with him, the professor's grandfather often showed him street name plates and told him about famous Poles. - "'It remained inside me somewhere. I will not pass by indifferently without paying attention to a name or inscription wherever I am in the world,' says the scientist.
The linguist investigated geographical names at first, then took up firmness - he wrote a book about signboard names in Polish and Bulgarian cities. However, he wants to put everything he has been concerned with thus far into a broader context. He became fascinated by the linguistic cityscape, an issue not yet prevalent in Polish linguistics, taken from Anglo-Saxon scholars. The linguistic landscape consists of all the inscriptions we perceive around us. These can include administrative signs as well as public signs.
The entire article is available in Polish on the Życie Uniwersyteckie website.
Photo by A. Wykrota