Prestiż nazw obiektów handlowych i usługowych

THE PRESTIGE OF THE NAMES OF TRADING AND SERVICE POINTS The paper presents the names of trading and service points, such as salon (hairdresser’s salon), instytut (cosmetic institute), galeria (trade gallery), centrum (sports centre), which have been replacing older names like zakład (zakład fryzjerski), dom (dom towarowy) or ośrodek (ośrodek sportu). These new words, created as a result of neosemantisation, seem to be better because of their higher prestige. The term prestige has been used, so far, to describe people, institutions and jobs, however, in this article, it will be related to words. The aim of this paper was to find semantic and pragmatic components which indicate prestige of lexemes constituting the names of trading and service points. They are: emotional character of words, their territorial extent and relation to objects which are generally respected, because they refer to important values and higher-level needs. Choosing more prestigious names for trading and service points makes their position higher. It also increases the respect of jobs which are not prestigious.