Pomoc jako wartość w historii języka polskiego

Abstract

The present article analyses the evaluation of the social concept pomoc (help) from the Old Polish period until the modern times. Contemporarily pomoc expressed by the lexeme pomoc (‘help’) is positively marked in terms of axiology, which manifests itself e.g. in the collocations potrzebować pomocy ‘to require help/assis-tance’, dziękować za pomoc ‘to thank for help’, and above all – warto pomagać ‘it is worthwhile to help’. An integral part of spiritual culture, values constitute an important common heritage, and their understanding throughout centuries is characterised by both continuity and change, which is reflected in the language in which values are referred to and spoken about. The purpose of the present article is to establish whether and when help began to be recognised as a value or whether its evaluation underwent change during the course of more than six centuries. The analysis covered the contextual instances of the usage of the lexeme pomoc(the principal exponent of the concept pomoc) in the history of the Polish language in pursuit of those ele-ments of utterances which indicate the evaluation of the concept – combinations featuring the names of other values, axiologically marked adjectives or metaphorical approaches. On the basis of an analysis of the usage of the lexeme pomoc one may state that since the earliest times pomoc has been considered a value and that this is still the case, and the changes of its evaluation are slight. Therefore, this entity is universal in nature.