Loanwords from Jewish speech in an anti-Semitic narrative Cover Image

Zapożyczenia z mowy żydowskiej w narracji antysemickiej
Loanwords from Jewish speech in an anti-Semitic narrative

Author(s): Alina Cała
Subject(s): Jewish studies
Published by: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Summary/Abstract: Anti-Semites used a particular form of narrative that changed over time. Beginning with the 1880s the language of anti-Semitic propaganda adopted an increasingly aggressive tone. In the interwar period, on top of aggression, insinuations, lies or stereotypical simplifications already known from previous publications, anti-Semites more and more often turned to mockery, whose aim was to humiliate and depreciate Jews as well as their culture by means of sneering. The author of the article analyses a particular form of mockery which employed loanwords from the Yiddish language or was stylised as the Yiddish language itself. Such a phenomenon is illustrated with an example of feature articles published in “Myśl narodowa” weekly, a body of the nationalist political movement National Democracy targeted at intelligentsia and issued between 1921 and 1939 in Warsaw. The roots of this stylistic device go back to the vaudevilles staged in cafés in the late 19th century, which included satirical monologues of Jewish protagonists speaking a distinct Polish language filled with linguistic mistakes and Yiddishisms.

  • Issue Year: 2012
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 1-8
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: Polish