Cross-cultural aspects of contrastive studies: the discourse of fact and truth in English and Polish. A corpus-based study

Abstract

English culture is sometimes referred to as 'a culture of fact' (Shapiro 2000), while in the cultural and intellectual climate of Poland, the concept of 'truth' seems to have occupied a more important position. Thus, in many contexts where English makes reference to 'fact', Polish refers to 'prawda' ('truth'). The present paper is an attempt to compare the ways in which the notions of 'fact' and 'truth' are conceptualised in English and Polish by examining their use and frequency in electronic corpora of the two languages.