Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 53(4), 2017, pp. 511–534 © Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland doi: 10.1515/psicl-2017-0019 “AFFECTIONATE” DIMINUTIVE EXPLETIVES FROM THE RELIGIOUS NAME JEZU(S)! IN POLISH DOROTA LOCKYER University of British Columbia, Vancouver dlockyer@alumni.ubc.ca ABSTRACT The paper provides a corpus-driven analysis of the emotive meanings and pragmatic functions of Polish ‘affectionate’ expletives from Jezu(s)! ‘Jesus!’ which contain di- minutive suffixes, e.g. Jezusku ‘Jesus.DIM’ and Jezusieńku ‘Jesus.DIM.DIM’. While af- fectionate forms of various names, including Jezu(s), have been frequently discussed in Polish, few studies – if any – have discussed their various uses as expletives in Polish. Because these diminutive forms of expletives (DEs) are used infrequently, this study us- es the Internet as corpus by collecting examples from blogs, the microblogging site Twit- ter, forums, and The National Corpus of Polish (NKJP). It is shown that the force evoked by the expletive Jezu(s) causes the diminutive forms to typically fall on either end of the negative-positive polarity scale; that is, the DEs rarely express neutral force. Rather, they are mainly used to convey strong positive attitude (e.g. appreciation) or negative attitude (e.g. complaint, frustration). Often, the ‘softness’ of the blow and/or degree of positive emotion depends on the diminutive suffix(es) used. This interesting paradox – a lexical item that is a combination of negative expletive force and positive tender diminutives – provides deeper insight into the extent of diminutive and expletive use in contemporary Polish. Keywords: expletives, diminutives, evaluation, qualitative analysis, Internet language 1. Introduction 1 In Polish (as in English and many other languages), the name Jezu(s) ‘Jesus’ may be used as an expletive to express negative force. But Polish also has sev- 1 This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC). I would like to thank Laurel Brinton for her suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. I also thank the two anonymous PSiCL reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Naturally, all remaining errors are my own. Authenticated | dlockyer@alumni.ubc.ca author's copy Download Date | 12/11/17 4:04 AM