Ocena stabilności ekspresywnej leksemu gówniak

The analysis of the expressive stability of lexeme ‘gówniak’ in Polish The aim of this article is to analyse the expressive stability of the Polish lexeme ‘gówniak’. Although the said lexeme is a relatively new linguistic phenomenon – as it appeared for the first time in the Polish web in 2014 – it is becoming more and more popular among a specific type of internet users and its meaning has started to expand. The expressive stability of the lexeme was analysed on the basis of the basic human emotions by Anna Wierzbicka, value theory by Jadwiga Puzynina, Likert scale, and stylistic marking. Since the lexeme doesn’t appear in any paper dictionaries, the following websites served as sources for the analysis: language corpus monco.frazeo.pl, Polish Wordnet, Internet dictionary of slang miejski.pl, and above all numerous entries on blogs and forums, memes and entertainment websites such as wykop.pl and joemonster.org. The analysis allowed to establish four main meanings of the lexeme ‘gówniak’: (1) a definition of (someone else’s) child popular among users of entertainment websites, (2) an annoying, naughty child, (3) a child of ‘Seba’ and ‘Karyna’, (4) a humorous definition of (your own) child. Moreover, the analysis of the sources shows that the emotional marking of the lexeme is constantly changing: from purely negative (resulting from its morphological structure) to more neutral or even positive one.