On need to study social and political functions of language – as exemplified by and in the Slavonic countries  Cover Image

O potrzebie badań funkcji społecznych i politycznych języka - na przykładzie krajów słowiańskich
On need to study social and political functions of language – as exemplified by and in the Slavonic countries

Author(s): Jerzy Molas
Subject(s): Language studies
Published by: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Summary/Abstract: The article presents examples of conflicts that emerged in the Slavic linguistics which, similarly to the lexical disputes within the Slavonic world emerge from profound ideological and religious differences and are further incended by their authors’ varying perception of tradition – another words are based on the socio-political differences, and are then transplanted into the world of science (viz. discussions on the language differentiation between the Kaszub and the Silesian ethnic groups, the language and linguistic conflicts in the domain of functioning of the Serbo-Croatian language, fierce disputes between the Bulgarians and Macedonians, Czechs and Slovaks, problems with defining stratification of factions of the contemporary Slovenian language or with the status of the Ukrainian and Belarus languages). In order to succeed with the objective record of the phenomena of the type, the author proposes to include the elements of culture, politology, history and sociology into the linguistic analyses. However, at the same time the author warns that as the problems to be analysed are often of very complex nature, a scholar not equipped with his or her profound linguist knowledge will inevitably fail to succeed in the study, similarly as the socio-linguistic methodology used by the scholars to date also fails to suffice for the purpose. Thus the author refers to the definition of the philology as it was presented by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay who considered it to be an inter-disciplinary science whose purpose was the deep, profound and complex study of other cultures, societies and humans through texts and the language of a particular group.

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: 40
  • Page Range: 307-316
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: Polish