Hans Georg Gadamer in his studies on the essence of hermeneutics emphasizes in a special way the role of language in cognition and the understanding of the world. The paper intends to find an application of Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the linguists’ research of the linguistic worldview. Section 1 of the paper considers the worldview in linguistics, section 2 analyzes some aspects of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, while section 3 connects the problems considered in sections 1 and 2 and determines the aim of the paper. The presented considerations are situated in the reflection on the philosophical foundations of linguistic research.

The onymic image of the world in a translation through an intermediary language as exemplified by the anthroponyms in a collection of short stories “Baummoos pflücken” (lit. “The Lichen Collector”) by Zhang Wei.

The article addresses the issue of the linguistic image of the world — reflected in proper names — and of its translation. Chinese onyms and their related forms of address contain information about mutual relations between the speaker and the named object, thus offering a better insight into social relations in small language and cultural communities. The challenge for the translator is not only to translate these onyms, but also to preserve their social function in the text. This has been exemplified in the article by a translation of a collection of short stories from Chinese to Polish through German, where the intermediary language adds another coherence layer. The theory of the linguistic image of the world and proper names per se are a starting point for a critical analysis of this specific translation in view of the translation of onyms and of their potential for conveying the image of the world. Emphasis is placed on the transfer of the social functions of onyms into the target language. The influence of onyms and of their consistent treatment in the translation on the coherence of the studied text has also been taken into account.

W artykule omówiono i poddano analizie dwa źródłowe teksty Henryka Elzenberga dotyczące zagadnienia zależności i niezależności etyki od obrazu świata oraz sporu o zależność etyki od religii. Temat dyskutowany był w Polsce od połowy lat pięćdziesiątych. W tekstach Elzenberga poddany został precyzyjnej analizie semantycznej i realnej. Jej wynik pokazuje, że treść ocen i norm pochodnych, ich realność i uzasadnienie są zależne od obrazu świata, w którym oceny i normy funkcjonują. Zależność od obrazu świata ulega natomiast ograniczeniu w sferze ocen i norm podstawowych. Podobnie jest z zależnością etyki od religii. Religijny obraz świata wielorako wpływa na zakres podmiotowy i przedmiotowy etyki, jej strukturę, na świadomość mocy obowiązującej i siłę motywacyjną, ale nie ma wpływu na logiczne uzasadnienie etyki. Etyka poza religijnym obrazem świata jest możliwa. Elzenberg wypowiada się z pozycji intuicjonisty w teorii poznania moralnego i jest perfekcjonistą w podążaniu za tym, co poznane moralnie i etycznie ugruntowane. Odrzuca jednak nieścisłe twierdzenie o niezależności etyki od obrazu świata i religii w ogóle.

The dual nature of water (acqua) in feminine portals – The work is an attempt to show how the concept of acqua (water) is conceptualized in Italian persuasive discourse regarding the health and beauty of modern women. The conducted research mainly based on the notion of imagery in language (Langacker) and linguistic picture of the world (Bartmiński) reveals a number of semantic and axiological aspects involved by the analyzed concept. The valuation of acqua is also noteworthy, as water functions in the linguistic system as a neutral concept, while the corpus subjected to the analysis shows that it has a double face: it is benevolent and destructive at the same time.

In the article, basing on quotes from Polish fi lms made after 1990, author reconstructs a linguistic picture of Russia and Russians. In all analysed fi lms, regardless of their artistic value, picture of our eastern neighbours is mostly simplifi ed and stereotypised. We observe “secondary stereotypisation of stereotype”. These actions are taken to strengthen autostereotype of Poland and Pole, they are used in national psychotherapy.

The article focuses on the translation of non-literary Chinese proper names, a subject which to date has not enjoyed much research interest as a result of the common belief that proper names are untranslatable. The article discusses techniques used in the translation of Chinese anthroponyms, toponyms and brand names into Polish and English. The author refers to the strategies used in the process of transferring names to the target language and presents the consequences of applying given techniques from the cognitive perspective, which entails analysing the names in terms of their structure and meaning. Particular attention is paid to the connotations of the names, the impact they have on the speakers of a given language, as well as the mental images that can be derived from their structure. In the contrastive analysis of the names of tourist locations in Beijing and their Polish and English equivalents, the author applies the cognitive grammar approach as developed by Ronald W. Langacker. The image schemas of the names are used to present the distinct conceptualizations embodied in the names with the same references in diff erent languages. One of the chapters describes how European names are adapted into Chinese. The study also provides an overview of the characteristics of the Chinese onomasticon, a factor which makes translation from Chinese to European languages particularly complicated. The observations made in the course of the analysis permit conclusions to be drawn on the linguistic worldview created by Polish, Chinese and English propria.