The article puts forwards the thesis that the language in most of Maria Dąbrowska’s diaries was a conscious creation on the part of the writer and was not the result of a spontaneous recording of events and the author’s experiences. It should also be assumed that Dąbrowska wrote the diaries with the view that they would later (probably posthumously) be published and that she consciously used that style and linguistic tricks. The diaries include not only the author’s narrative but also direct and indirect speech, as well as seemingly reported speech. One can only admire Dąbrowska’s mastery of language, whereby she was able to combine various linguistic and stylistic elements in order to create a cohesive whole in specific entries in the diaries. The article also shows the evolution of the style of Maria Dąbrowska’s diaries from the relatively unoriginal, youthful style of the diaries of the 1920s to the mature, original style of the diaries of the 1950s and 1960s. It also shows that the author – depending on the subject and its importance – used vocabularies for various registers of the Polish language: from academic and officialese, through careful standard Polish (most frequently), to colloquial and even vulgar language. Some attention is paid to the author’s awareness of language, as well as her general attitude to both the language of her own works as well as to linguists. This article is only a preliminary study – the language of Maria Dąbrowska’s diaries deserves detailed study.
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