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Contrastive Analysis of English and Polish Military Texts 93
documents were counterparts or translations of the Soviet ones. As a result, it is
possible to find cases of awkward pleonasms or word combinations in them.
However, because the investigated Polish samples (1, 3 and 6) represent a
mature and well thought-out style of writing, I could not find much evidence that
would support that popular stereotype. There is only one instance of such a slip. It
appears in the passage on loading and unloading of materiel. The Polish wording
is wymiary gabarytowe, which can be translated into English as ‘dimensional
measurements’, which constitutes a pleonasm.
7. Grammaticalizing
As far as contrastive analysis in terms of grammar resources in the investigated
texts is concerned, is should be noted that while the Polish and English
counterparts feature a high frequency of modal constructions and absence of
deixis, the passive voice is more frequent in the examined English corpus. At the
same time, Polish logistic texts are characterized by a greater quantity of impersonal
constructions, e.g. należy dążyć / wykorzystać / rozmieszczać etc. (“one
should strive / employ / deploy”) or dopuszcza / określa się, że etc. (“it is allowed
/ estimated that”). The Polish equivalents of English modal verbs play an equally
significant role in the contrasted Polish documents. There are numerous cases of
the use of the Polish equivalent of ‘should’ to suggest the desired course of
actions, e.g. “Material equipment which is to be transported by air should be
moved to the field stores by wheeled means of transport” (Sample 1). Furthermore,
Polish logistic manuals present a greater number of imperative mood
clauses which enhances its instructive character. Moreover, while both the NATO
and Polish texts are marked by a relatively high frequency of circumstances of
manner, in its quality aspect, the examined Polish documents show an increased
number of circumstances of temporal location, and the English military texts
feature many instances of the location circumstantial, in its spatial aspect.
The avoidance of deictics, the excessive use of the passive voice, and
impersonal constructions result from the fact that the documents in both
languages are written by organizations of higher authority. Consequently, it is not
necessary for their writers to outwardly instruct their reader. Instead both Polish
and English writers can allow more implicit language for the texts.
8. Letter layout
In general terms, the letter layouts in the contrasted text repertoires are very
different from each other. First of all, the format of NATO documents is
established for all services by separate documents issued by the Military Agency
for Standardization. Polish documents used to have standards only for some
official documents, e.g. orders, memoranda, and reports, whereas layouts of
manuals followed their authors’ imagination. This is why, while the NATO texts