Pan, pani and panstwo as polite addressive expressions in the polish language

Abstract

In the article the author traces the sociolinguistic formation of the concepts pan, pani and panstwo which incessantly took place throughout the centuries. An examination of their grammatical status points to the existence of differentiated, although synonymous, definitions of this expression. Today they are designated as "equivelant", "substitutes" or "forms of the second person pronoun" and accompanied with the attribution "contextual". The author opines that they still possess an enormous use "value" - to fill in the incomplete pronoun communicativity which the author links with the identification of gender which the nouns pan, pani and panstwo carry within themselves outside of the addressive context.