Words mean : words look : words sell (themselves)

Abstract

An article entitled Words Mean. Words Look. Words Sell (Themselves) focuses on three issues: dominance of the use of English loanwords over attempts to create their Polish equivalents (as a result of which a product, a process, an event, or an artefact promoted by the English-speaking culture is adopted together with its name), a trend whereby words (and titles composed of words) become images (through a choice of font, a non-standard use of lowercase and uppercase letters, or an inclusion of non-letter characters, e.g. parentheses), and ascribing to words present in micro-acts a promotional function, advertising the entire product – a text. The trends discussed in the article are not new, but it is their intensity level that is new.