Linguistic Means of Expressing Judgments about the So-Called Stick-Outs, Postcards and Bibliophilic Books in the Epistolographic Works of Wisława Szymborska

The subject of the study is the linguistic means of valuation contained in letters of the Polish Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska to the Toruń bibliophile Tadeusz Zakrzewski. They refer to the poet’s passion for collecting and her passion for creating unique, unrepeatable collages, stickers, postcards “of her own making”, which were sent to friends, and loved ones. Among these unsophisticated linguistic means, value-adjectives (evaluatives) occupy an important place, e.g. great, wonderful, lovely, and nouns: small postcards, rarity, trivia, trifles, wonders. Analysis of the linguistic material showed that adjectives and nouns that are axiologically characterized refer mainly to the aesthetic values of the postcards collected and the bibliophilic qualities of the books sent. Less numerous in terms of frequency are yet other linguistic exponents of evaluations.