Chapter 12. English influence on Polish proverbial language

The aim of this article is to discuss recent borrowings of English proverbs into Polish. Foreign proverbs are often cited when members of a linguistic community wish to signal their identification with another community, which is why changes in proverbial language may be indicative of the adoption of new cultural patterns by a society. It seems that a few English proverbs have begun to replace outdated Polish sayings, while some others, such as those reflecting patterns of Anglo-American culture, are being added to the stock of traditional Polish proverbs. The present study is corpus based. It discusses the contexts in which the proverbs appear in Polish, the metalinguistic tags used to introduce them, and the cultural significance of these borrowings.