Być kobietą, być graczem... Funkcjonowanie wyrazu „graczka” w przestrzeni internetu

The article discusses several modes of expressing a game player’s gender applied by users of the Internet. According to the author, one of the main functions of the word ‘graczka’ (usually translated as ‘female game player’) is to fill a lexical gap. The gap exists in the language due to the fact that Polish usually lacks a short female equivalent of the word ‘gracz’ (masculine for ‘game player’). Thus, not only does the implementation of the word ‘graczka’ manifest elimination of the asymmetry related to gender in Polish nouns referring to performers, but it also shows that users of the Internet are in favor of the economy principle in their variant of the Polish language.