The influence of social and cultural changes on the language etiquette at the beginning of the modern Poland age
The aim of the article is to indicate the most important modifications in the Polish language etiquette that were conditioned by social and cultural changes which can be observed from the mid-18th century till the 1860s. What became visible in this period was the crisis of values typical of Sarmatism, which, as aconsequence, led to the disappearance of acts of language etiquette characteristic of the noble sociolect and the emergence of new polite forms. The corpus of the studied texts includes: letters, diaries, memoirs, dramas and novels. Such aselected language material allows for the examination of both written and oral polite forms, as well as it displays their formal and functional changeability in as broad social and cultural context as possible. The analysis of the collected material allows to state that the first century of the modern Poland age was the time of the fundamental changes in the Polish language etiquette. As much as the middle Poland age was the period of the enrichment of the structures, in the examined period there was aclear tendency to simplify and individualize them.