Studia Językoznawcze

This article offers a genologic analysis of the printed dedicational texts contained in the popular novels by Remigiusz Mróz. Considering the main aspects, i.e. structural, linguistic-stylistic, and pragmatic, of this genre makes it possible to identify both the conventional elements, that refer to the genre tradition, and the unconventional ones. The purpose of the investigation is therefore to observe concrete textual realizations, and in consequence, by way of generalization, to specify certain genre features of the contemporary printed dedication and draw conclusions concerning the genologic status of the discussed forms of communication. It turns out that most of the genre modifications in the contemporary printed dedication are determined by the changes in the pragmatic aspect of the genre. The analysis of the dedicational texts leads to two main conclusions. First, the dynamics of communication processes and the variability of social and cultural language behaviours changed the communicative purpose of dedication. The communicative intent is not so much the very act of offering the addressee the literary work and the desire to endear oneself to them by it, as creating an image of the sender of the message and the desire to gain sympathy of the witness of this act of offering, the reader. Second, printed dedications published in the contemporary popular novels are realizations of an alternating genre pattern.