A Sociopragmatic Study of Conventional Similes in Polish Drama (1772-1939): A Corpus-Based Approach

A Sociopragmatic Study of Conventional Similes in Polish Drama (1772-1939): A Corpus-Based Approach This poster presents a corpus-based sociopragmatic analysis of conventional similes in Polish dramatic texts from 1772 to 1939. Methodology: The study uses a specially annotated corpus of 50 Polish dramas (approx. 900k tokens), created in collaboration with CLARIN-PL. The analysis focuses on 94 fixed comparisons tagged with detailed sociolinguistic metadata, including the speaker's gender, age, social status, and the speech act (e.g., praise, mock). Findings: Quantitative analysis reveals that similes are markers on a "social map." Key findings include the visible role of hierarchy in Orders and stronger symmetry in Content and Exchange speech acts. The study demonstrates how CLARIN-PL tools can link historical linguistics and pragmatics to uncover hidden patterns of gender and status in language. Keywords: DraCor, Simile, Sociopragmatics, KorTeDa, Corpus Linguistics, CLARIN-PL, Historical Sociolinguistics.