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. The study uses a specially annotated corpus of 50 Polish dramas (approx. 900k tokens), created in the University of Silesia in Katowice 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), identified by the researcher. 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 digital tools can link historical linguistics and pragmatics to uncover hidden patterns of gender and status in language. Keywords: DraCor, KorTeDa, Simile, Sociopragmatics, Corpus Linguistics, CLARIN-PL, Historical Sociolinguistics.