Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

94 Anna Szczepaniak-Kozak
are uniform in style, each Polish text is idiosyncratic in this respect. To give an
example, all the examined NATO documents present security markings at the
centre top and bottom of each page, which is something not found in Polish texts
even if they are classified as restricted. Additionally, the layout of the NATO
logistics documents is clearer. As a result, the ideas in the investigated NATO
documents are not as densely packed as they are in the Polish corpus. What
distinguishes the English and Polish styles is also their distinct page and
paragraph numeration systems and the manner of date and hour recording.
9. Conclusions
Military texts are always written for some practical goal, and not for a free
expression of feelings or for impressing the audience. In this type of discourse
poetic images or rhetorical figures, affective expressions of joy or sadness, or
verbal humour should not be expected. At the same time, attitudinal lexis is not
present at all. This feature of military language is conditioned by the fact that
once military writers write for a specific set of purposes and readers, they must
carefully choose and organize the information to be transmitted.
It appears that although those Polish and English schools of military writing
are congruent in terms of the discussed subjects, involved discourse participants
and established terminology, the Polish texts are more detailed in character.
Additionally, the Polish Warsaw Pact documents use a great number of
impersonal constructions, whereas in their English counterparts the passive voice
is more frequent. Finally, the contrasted styles of writing differ in terms of the text
layout. The NATO texts have a more legible and standardized document format
than the investigated Polish samples. All in all, we may postulate that both of the
styles of writing represent formal and impersonal registers but they attain those
qualities in a different way.
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