Chapter Three
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By analogy, EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY IS LACK OF CONTACT WITH THE
GROUND metaphor which stems from BALANCE image schema, giving rise
to the colloquial/idiomatic use of the Polish verb odlecieü (‘fly away’) ,
which applied metaphorically acquires the meaning of the English
verbs/expressions to trip, zone out, be out of it:
(25) “Gowin odleciaá? Nie, odlot zaliczyá raczej poseá Biernat”
(Gowin flew away? No, it was rather MP Biernat who got high),
(26) “Poseá JoĔski odleciaá”
(MP Jonski flew away),
(27) “Zanim Sikorski ‘odleciaá’, Tusk ‘przemawiaá’ w Sejmie RP”
(Before Sikorski ‘flew away’, Tusk ‘spoke’ in the Sejm (lower
house of the Polish Parliament).In a very informal usage, odlecieü (lit. fly away) vividly suggests a
departure from reality, for which there seems to be little tolerance among
the public when responsibility for one’s words is concerned.
Figure 3. “We are just helping Eurodeputy Iwaszkiewicz ... get back down to the
Earth” (Sztuczne Fioáki^6 facebook account).
(^6) Sztuczne Fioáki (‘Fake Violets’) is a nickname of a satirist who employs works of
arts as backgrounds for cartoons primarily conveying political commentary via a
facebook account.