“Onoma” Student Research Society

We are a linguistics society with a long-standing tradition, operating within the Institute of Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology, University of Opole. In recent years the society has undergone a transformation and, under the influence of its active members, has expanded its activities to cover all branches of linguistics; at present, we are particularly interested in topics related to sociolinguistics, inclusive language, linguistic landscape and the linguistic worldview.

We actively conduct a variety of research projects, including comparative studies of feminine, masculine and neuter forms in Finnish and Polish. For many years, we have also been inspiring young people in primary and secondary schools to broaden their knowledge by organising a regular Polish Language Knowledge Competition. During the competition, pupils have the opportunity to test themselves not only on their knowledge of literature, grammar and spelling, but also in terms of rhetoric – in the public speaking section of the competition.

In addition to our academic activities, we also carry out outreach work, promoting learning, and in particular linguistics, through various workshops, including the traditional ‘Afternoon Tea with Onoma’, as well as in collaboration with the Forthem consortium of European universities. A larger-scale popular science initiative we undertook in the 2023/2024 is the journal “Semestralnik Językoznawczy”, in which members of the Society have the opportunity to publish popular science articles on topics of particular interest to them, creating a new platform for creative activity and sharing knowledge with the academic community.

We welcome with open arms anyone who would like to get involved in the Society’s activities and become part of our slowly growing group of young people studying language.