“Nobody from the Kossaks family has mounted a horse with a knife and fork so far” – Axiolinguistic analysis of evaluative culinary language in letters written by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to describe evaluative language in letters written by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska to her husband. The study focuses on examples that illustrate the evaluation of objects related to culinary topics. Over sixty cases of evaluation have been identified in the purpose-built corpus of culinary contexts, where the primary part of speech with the evaluative function was the adjective. The theoretical framework of the study adheres to axiolinguistics. The methods and tools employed in the investigation involve a corpus-based analysis, i.e., frequency, distribution and sentiment analysis in the quantitative part, and axiolinguistic typologies and expert annotation in the qualitative part. The results of the study have shown that the predominant evaluation type is the lexical one, followed by the grammatical and connotative. The study also shows that the majority of the culinary contexts in the corpus are negatively charged.