Czy pytać to tylko ‘zadawać pytanie’? Kilka uwag o medialnym użyciu tego czasownika

The verb pytać [to ask] is one of the basic verba dicendi, thus its meaning seems obvious and its lexicographical descriptions exhaustive. At the same time, contemporary uses of this lexeme in the media suggest the presence of additional components, not yet taken into account in the studies of this verb. The author will therefore analyse selected quotations from informative Internet portals and TV dailies in order to then attempt to answer the question posed in the title. The description will take into account the pragmatic elements of the utterance: its context, information about the sender and the assumed recipient, as well as the entire communication situation; the conclusions will, in turn, be confronted with descriptions of the verb pytać [to ask] present in the linguistic literature.