What does „financial” mean in accounting?

Abstract

Accounting is closely related to language, which is manifested in the fact that to describe phenomena and events, in addition to numbers, it uses natural language, as well as that it is sometimes referred to as the „business language”. The purpose of this article is to identify and explain the meanings of the adjective „financial” in accounting. To achieve this goal, the method of qualitative analysis was adopted, including the collection and coding of documents, the development of language corpora (Polish and English), descrip- tive and comparative analysis, interpretation and explanation. The author adopts a semiotic perspective, in which the semantic (sense and meaning) and syntactic (logic and cohesion) aspects were analysed. As a result of the conducted research, it was determined that the adjective „financial” has numerous mean- ings in accounting, depending on the context, namely: it may refer to „finance” (1), or „financing” (2), or „financial statement” (3), or it may denote categories having the opposite meaning to „non-financial” (4), „managerial” (5), „asset” (6), „material” (7), „intangible” (8), „operating” (9) or „investing” (10).