Abstract
Abstract The document titled “14 points of Wilson” was announced by the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson in his speech addressed to the United States Congress on 8th January 1918. The speech is one of the most well known documents of the First World War as it touched upon several world issues. The text has been interpreted ever since in respect to the importance and real meaning of points formulated by Wilson. One of the points referred to Poland. The aim of the paper is to focus on the exponents of deontic modality used in that text of historical value and to find the answer to the question concerning the deontic value of each point. The analysis will encompass the principles of deontic logic as well as the meaning of deontic modals in legal discourse at the time of speech delivery as those 14 points should be classified as a text belonging to legal genres. The aim of the paper is to present the historical background and the linguistic analysis in order to find out whether historical facts, interpretations and language used correspond with one another.
Highlights
The main aim of the paper is to analyse the document titled “14 points of Wilson” which was announced by the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson in his speech addressed to the United States Congress on 8th January 1918
The aim of the paper is to focus on the exponents of deontic modality used in that text of historical value and to find the answer to the question concerning the deontic value of each point
The analysis will encompass the principles of deontic logic as well as the meaning of deontic modals in legal discourse at the time of speech delivery as those 14 points should be classified as a text belonging to legal genres
Summary
The main aim of the paper is to analyse the document titled “14 points of Wilson” which was announced by the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson in his speech addressed to the United States Congress on 8th January 1918. Among others one of them focused on Poland which at that time was not present at the maps of Europe as it was partitioned by Prussia, Austria and Russia. They contained signposts for foreign postwar American diplomacy that were obviously rated as extremely significant by historians (cf Kissinger 1996) and there is no denying the fact that the USA implemented the strategy in the early 20th century. The analysis will encompass the principles of deontic logic (cf von Wright 1951) as well as the meaning of deontic modals in legal discourse at the time of speech delivery as those 14 points should be classified as a text belonging to legal genres. The fact the meanings of modals in official and legal contexts have not been observed proves the thesis that the language is frozen and tradition-bound (cf. Mellinkoff 1963)
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