Polskie miasta i wsie XXI wieku. Zacieranie się granic, języków i kultur
Polish Cities and Villages in the 21st Century: Blurring of the Borders, Languages and Cultures

Summary/Abstract: Up to the middle of the 20th century, big cities, as economic units and communities that were characterized by the very varied professional and social structure of their inhabitants, marked not only administrative borders but also clear linguistic and cultural borders for the traditional monolithic village. After the Second World War, due to various socio-economic processes which resulted in big cities absorbing the surrounding villages, the administrative borders also started to change. Migrations from villages to cities and improved education began the process of blurring cultural and linguistic borders in the 20th century. At the beginning of the 21st century, the phenomenon of linguistic-cultural unification was facilitated by the trend of inhabitants of big cities starting to move to suburban villages. However, the rapid intensification of this phenomenon was mainly influenced by the common availability of the internet. The English language and the American style of culture became the factors that unified the linguistic and cultural differences between Polish cities and villages. The first quarter of the 21st century marked the beginning of the process of blurring not only the cultural differences between the city and the village, but also the virtual borders between Polish culture and the foreign culture of the Western world.

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