A Comparative Analysis of Piotr Borkowski's (1963) and Roman Gajda's (1970) English–Polish Phraseological Dictionaries: Practice vs. Theory

Abstract

This paper offers an insight into the short and largely unexplored history of English–Polish and Polish–English phraseological lexicography. It aims to analyse two post-war English–Polish phraseological dictionaries, An English–Polish Dictionary of Idioms and Phrases (1963) by Piotr Borkowski and Wybór idiomów angielskich [A Selection of English Idioms] (1970) by Roman Gajda, from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. At first sight, they seem to share several features, insofar as both are monoscopal English–Polish volumes of a similar size; both were addressed to Polish learners of English; and both drew on The Kosciuszko Foundation Dictionary: English–Polish (1959), an exhaustive reference work available at that time. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals marked differences not only in the contents of the dictionaries, but also in their authors' ideas of phraseology. This case study is preceded by theoretical considerations concerning the nature of comparative analyses in (meta)lexicographical discourse. The conclusions draw partly on the practical and partly on the theoretical findings. Keywords: dictionary, Polish, English, phraseology, multi-word expression, idiom, equivalent, comparative (meta)lexicography, sociocultural (meta)lexicography