Language, dialogue and public speech - in Jerzy Pilch's columns (in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts)

The main research objective of this article is to reconstruct reflections on Polish language issues in Jerzy Pilch's columns (1952-2020). Among other things, the author poses questions concerning the evaluation of the state of contemporary Polish contained in these texts and the existing - according to Pilch - relations between language and the social context. The textological analysis and interpretation of the selected columns is made with the help of some concepts of the eminent humanist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), such as polyphonicity, dialogue, speech genre... The analysis demonstrates the importance of the theme of language in Jerzy Pilch's column writing. His reflections range from the general contemporary Polish language to individual words, their history, semantics and connotations. The meta -linguistic motifs of the columns concern not only private speech, everyday conversations, but also dialogue in the public, political sphere. Pilch's assessment of contemporary Polish is generally negative. Descriptions of linguistic usus dominated by Internet slang and unnecessary English neologisms prevail. However, language, Pilch believes, is a 'self-cleaning' mechanism.