Folklorystyka i etnolingwistyka a horyzont poznawczy antropologii kultury
FOLK STUDIES, ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL HORIZON OF THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CULTURE

Summary/Abstract: The author considers the relationship between ethnolinguistics and traditional folk studies at the time when the positivistic 'table of research disciplines' disintegrates and interdisciplinary endeavours become more and more fashionable. By supporting not interdisciplinary but rather trans-disciplinary research, he underscores the fact that both disciplines (ethnolinguistics and folk studies) concentrate on similar anthropological issues, which delimit their common epistemological 'horizon': the worldview, the problem of the spoken word, its axiology, language in the context of action, the community-integrating function of language and culture, the idiom of colloquialness and everyday language use. As a theoretician and researcher of culture, the author recognizes the inspirational role of ethnolinguistics in adding the anthropological aspect to folk studies, or even to the humanities as a whole, which role is especially significant when one focuses on the problem of social images of the world and seeks the determinants of collective, ethnic or national identity. The subsequent volumes of 'Slownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych' (A Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols), he claims, 'may be vital for historians of social thought or even historians of ideas', because 'the ethnolinguistic approach allows one to identify, in a folk song or a fairy tale, a worldview together with its active and acting subject'.

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