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Великаны, дикие и инные «чужие» люди

Author(s): Ljubinko Radenković / Language(s): Russian Issue: 20/2008

According to Slavic beliefs, also present in other peoples, humans are not the only humanoid creatures in the world. It is believed that before the Flood or before the emergence of present-day humans, the earth was inhabited by some “wild creatures”, who lived in remote places, far away from people or even from the sea. People can contact some of them without jeopardizing their own lives, but not the others. These “wild creatures” are frequently referred to with the names of neighbouring nations, which due to their different language and culture are treated as “alien”. Specific characteristics of the “wild creatures” are then transferred onto certain minorities, which suggests a low status of the latter in the society.

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Zmiana tożsamości narodowej a opozycja swój / obcy

Author(s): Dejan Ajdačić / Language(s): Polish Issue: 20/2008

The article deals with changes of ethno-religious identity and ethnic stereotypes. The opposition between US and THEM plays a major role in shaping one’s group identity and determining one’s relationships with others (those who belong to us, who are similar and friendly vs. those who do not, who are different and hostile). Of all types of identity, the ethno-religious identity is the least amenable to change in one’s own environment but may and does change in a foreign context, among displaced persons, emigrants etc. Important factors of identity are cultural in nature and have to do with religion, customs and language. Depending on how much the community wants its new members to assimilate, the mutual relationship between cultures involves adjustment or obliteration of cultural differences. Identity may change in various ways: when identity is changed, the characteristics and relationships of the representatives of one group change through self-identification and naming; when identities are exchanged, self-identification and self-reference change together with the group’s characteristics (members of the group call themselves representatives of another nation or denomination). The loss of identity and the acquisition of a new one are most of the time parallel processes but they are not mutually dependent. Some aspects of the loss are not so strongly connected with the acquisition (weakening, neglect, oblivion and renunciation), whereas others are (double identity, replacement of an ethic identity by another ethnic identity or by an identity of a different type, e.g. professional). The analysis considers the role of the US/THEM opposition in various types of changes of national identity.

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Принципы описания и адаптации «чужой» культуры языковыми средствами «своей» традиции

Author(s): Oľga Vladislavovna Belova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 20/2008

The author deals with the problem of adapting a foreign culture through linguistic means from one’s own tradition, mainly lexis and phraseology. Specifically, she deals with the folk terminology of Slavs and Jews and observes that Jewish rituals or customs may be referred to by means of Slavic, i.e. “one’s own” lexis. The following issues are discussed: (1) the use of distinct terms to describe foreign reality, e.g. окóпысько (the term used only in reference to Jewish burial places); (2) the use of familiar terms to refer to elements of the foreign culture (e.g. cerkiew ‘orthodox church’ or kaplica ‘chapel’ used in reference to Jewish temples); (3) adaptation of a foreign term to one’s own tradition (maca ‘matzah’, szabas ‘the Sabbath’); (4) the use of folk etymology as a mechanism of a peculiar kind of translation of texts from a foreign culture (e.g. a Jewish festival was called lizówki, which according to folk etymology came from lizać ‘lick’); (5) the use of a lexeme as a shortened form of a whole folk text (e.g. the Ukrainian Ґамана ‘bread used for the Purim holiday’). The data for the analysis come from Polesia (today’s Belarus, Ukraine and Poland), Podolia (today’s Ukraine), Podlachia (today’s eastern Poland and western Belarus), the vicinity of the Carpathians, Bukowina (today’s Ukraine) and western Belarus.

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Opozycja swoi/obcy w języku ginących społeczności Drzewian połabskich i pomorskich Słowińców

Author(s): Hanna Popowska-Taborska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 20/2008

The author investigates linguistic manifestations of self-identification of the now extinct communities of Polabian Drevani and Pomeranian Slovincians. The analysis is based on the Etymological Dictionary of the Language of Polabian Drevani (containing all the preserved lexical items of the language) and accounts elicited from Slovincians in the second half of the 19th century. On the basis of Polabian lexis, the author concludes that the original division into US and THEM, based on ethnic or linguistic distinctions, was transferred to the social domain (the criteria of social status, wealth, profession etc.). For example, the Slavic *nemьcь ‘mute person’, then ‘a German’, began to denote a young man of a social status higher than that of a peasant. Slovincians, similarly to other Slavs, based their feeling of collective identity on linguistic identity. However, in contrast to Polabians, Slovincians were aware of the presence of Kashubians, fellow Slavs, to their east. Being separated from them by marshland, Slovincians were destined to live within their own culture. Characteristics of that culture, such as fishing methods, were resistant to German influences for a long time (e.g. the original lexis of fishing was preserved the longest). With encroaching Germanization, Slovincian was reduced to a fishing jargon, the circle of US becoming progressively more and more limited to fishermen.

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Swój i obcy w litewskim językowym obrazie świata

Author(s): Aloyzas Gudavičius / Language(s): Polish Issue: 20/2008

The article compares the semantics of Lithuanian words savas ‘familiar, known’ and svetimas ‘foreign, alien’ with those concepts as they function in the consciousness of contemporary Lithuanian society. The author asks how the words’ semantics correlates with the changes of the concepts.Considerable emigration of Lithuanians to Western Europe and the United States, as well as opinion polls suggest that the people are dissatisfied with the situation in the country. In the media, Lithuania is evaluated more and more negatively, whereas other countries more and more positively. This is corroborated by the results of an experiment with the inhabitants and students in the city of Shyaulyay (Šiauliai) conducted by the author within the framework of Jerzy Bartmiński’s methodology. Of all the nationalities they evaluated Lithuanians as the lowest. In contrast, an analysis of dictionaries and corpora of Lithuanian reveals that savas is evaluated positively, while svetimas negatively. On this basis a conclusion is drawn that language lags behind changes in social awareness: the usage of the words savas and svetimas in contemporary Lithuanian reflects a traditional linguistic worldview despite changes in the concepts in people’s collective consciousness.

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Языковое самосознание староверов Латгалии

Author(s): Elena Koroleva / Language(s): Russian Issue: 20/2008

The author describes the history of Old Believers in an eastern part of Latvia called Latgalia. The people appeared there in the 17th century, having escaped from persecutions on the part of tsarist administration (the land belonged to Poland at the time). The region was deserted because of a plague epidemic. Old Believers played an important role in the development of the region’s economy. The importance of religious life rose in the 1980’s but at the moment it is diminishing again due to the emigration of the younger generation to Western Europe. There are about 100,000 Old Believers in Latvia today, the biggest community in the Baltic region. The author supports the view that Old Believers are a sub-ethnic group within the Russian ethnos. All conditions necessary for recognizing them as an ethnic group are fulfilled: a common origin and history, the role of culture, tradition, language and territory, as well as the feeling of ethnic distinctness. The level of the latter is high, Old Believers are proud to belong to the unique community which they constitute. This is manifested in the use of the names in reference to themselves. The people reject the negative name raskol’niki (i.e. those responsible for divisions) or staroobryadtsy, the latter being imposed by their enemies. They usually use the terms starovery or starovertsy ‘Old Believers’, with a positive element in it, highlighting the ancient, traditional and orthodox nature of the religion. The names can also be used as ethnonyms. Other names, too, contain elements of positive self-valuation: krepkovery, krepkovertsy. In reference to the members of the Orthodox Church, in turn, they use the names nikonantsy or nikonane (those who accepted Nikon’s reform). Another term used for the purpose, with negative valuation, is tserkovniki. In this way the US/THEM opposition is superimposed on the axiological opposition RIGHT/WRONG. Another manifestation of one’s integration with the group are certain polite forms of address and interjections (emotives).

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Опозиція СВІЙ – ЧУЖИЙ (ІНШИЙ) у мовному просторі Львова

Author(s): Natalia Hobzej / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 20/2008

The us / them opposition in the linguistic space of L’viv, Ukraine, is manifested in a number of ways. The town, founded by the Ukrainian prince Danylo Halytskiy, has always been multilingual and in the language of its inhabitants one finds borrowings from German, Polish, Yiddish and other languages. The most stable opposition is that between a Lvivite and a non-Lvivite, which, it seems, goes back to the beginnings of the town and is still maintained. Within the city boundaries, there are oppositions between its districts. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the linguo-cultural space of L’viv was dominated by the opposition based on national awareness, only partly upheld by the religious feeling of being a Greek Catholic or a Roman Catholic, which feeling contributed rather to the opposition between a “conscious Ukrainian” and a “Polonized Ukrainian”. Social relationships were also responsible for the emergence of an opposition peculiar to L’viv: that between a batiar (one of “us”) and frajer (non-batiar, a dupe, i.e. one of “them”). Apart from that, there are also other local and partial oppositions, characteristic of all towns with a long history.

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Pojęcie równości i jego profilowanie we współczesnym języku polskim

Author(s): Jerzy Bartmiński,Grzegorz Żuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 21/2009

The aim of the article is to reconstruct the concept of equality through the cognitive definition, in accordance with the ideas proposed by Anna Wierzbicka and Jerzy Bartmiński. The method allows the scholar to present the whole semantic richness of a word, its place in the lexical-semantic field and in the network of conceptual relations. Because the notion of equality will be subjected to cross-linguistic analysis, the tertium comparationis is the colloquial style in an anthropological understanding, which corresponds to van Dijk’s communicative universe, i.e. the cultural common ground.The data come from three types of sources: dictionaries of the Polish language, questionnaires, and texts of various styles and genres, mainly journalistic. On this basis, the properties of eqality recognized by speakers of Polish have been identified, including base elements, common to various types of discourse, and elements of a limited range, usually associated with one discourse type.The basic defining features of equality include: (1) the principle to be practised; (2) a relational aspect, obtaining between people and groups of people; (3) omission of the differences between people (within a certain range): (4) the omission resulting from human dignity or (5) from the same rights, or else (6) because omission of differences (within a range) is socially beneficial.The shaping of the variants of equality at the level of discourse is connected with the speakers’ points of view and goals, as well as with their value system (the ideological directionality of the discourse). The following types of discourse have been identified: leftwing, feminist (moderate and radical), liberaldemocratic, anarchist (radically liberal), national and rightwing, Catholic (typical of the Catholic Church). Each type is maintained by a specific social subject.

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Rozumienie narodu i jego profilowanie we współczesnym języku polskim

Author(s): Monika Bednarczuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 21/2009

The author attempts to describe the understanding of the concept of nation in contemporary Polish and construct its cognitive definition on the basis of the methodological principles proposed by Anna Wierzbicka and Jerzy Bartmiński. The analysis comprises systemic data, results of questionnaires, and diverse contemporary journalistic and other texts.The first part of the article contains an introduction to the conception of the cognitive definition and to the specific nature of Polish, culture-oriented and history-laden understanding of a nation. The second part presents, diachronically and synchronically, the functioning of the concept on the basis of lexicographic data, as well as its colloquial understanding by the speakers of Polish, on the basis the questionnaires.Next, a discussion is offered of the contemporary image of a nation in press and of the reactions to the abuse of the concept in certain political spheres. The base elements in the understanding of nation are: (1) a common territory; (2) a common history; (3) a common culture, collective consciousness, language, perhaps religion (Catholicism); (4) common political and economic interests. However, the position of individual elements in the structure of the concept is not stable, e.g. the questions of a common territory and language are sometimes treated loosely, especially by the younger generation (easier and more common migration). The final part is devoted to the problem of the profiling of the concept in various types of public discourse (leftwing, national and rightwing, Catholic (typical of the Catholic Church), liberaldemocratic, feminist, anarchist and neopagan), together with the ideological tradition on which these discourses are built.

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«Карьера» и «карьеризм» в истории русского и польского языков

Author(s): Lyubov Feoktistova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 21/2009

The paper is an attempt to trace the semantic evolution of the words карьера ‘career’ and карьеризм ‘careerism’ in Russian and their Polish counterparts, as well as elicit linguistic means of conceptualizing the corresponding phenomena, by analyzing systemic data, the discourse and linguistic reflection of the speakers.The source of the word карьера both in Russian and in Polish is considered to be the French carrière, initially ‘space for the passage of carts, horses etc.’. The history of the borrowed word in both Slavic languages represents the ‘road’ metaphor, rooted in the source language (Russian карьерный путь, Polish droga kariery, szlak kariery and the like). The existence of different (opposite) understandings of the content of карьера as ‘service’, brings about the necessity of differentiating карьера from карьеризм, which as a rule is evaluated negatively. On the whole, connotations of these axiologically marked words reveal their dependence on the ideology dominant in the society.

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Paryż i Warszawa: Stolice i ich mieszkańcy w oczach młodzieży polskiej i francuskiej

Author(s): Elżbieta Skibińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 21/2009

The author attempts to reconstruct the everyday picture of two capitals, Paris and Warsaw, together with their inhabitants, as entertained by the young French and Polish generation. The reconstruction is based on two questionnaires conducted in the spring of 2006 among two groups young people: French (107 respondents) and Polish (215 respondents). The results of the questionnaires are preliminary but help identify certain tendencies.In the responses of the French interviewees, Paris is portrayed as a capital, a world centre of fashion and culture, a big and beautiful city, constantly teeming with foreign visitors. Emphasized are the city’s peculiarity as a cultural phenomenon and its exogenic functions, designed to meet the needs of visitors; downplayed are elements which result from the town’s endogenic functions.The picture of Warsaw and its inhabitants is ambiguous and combines dislike and admiration. It is a richer and a more complex picture than that of Paris. The differences may result from the unequal number of French and Polish respondents but also from the dynamics of Warsaw’s development, parallel with transformations in the rest of the country, as well as from the city’s complicated past.In the pictures of the inhabitants of the two cities, the dominant features are connected with everyday life (negative ones, e.g. stress, haste, lack of education, snobbery, and positive ones, e.g. good education, participation in culture). The social features result in a rather negative image: arrogance and indifference are more important than etiquette; the positive features have to do with appearance (good looks and elegance) and wealth. In the eyes of the respondents, the inhabitants of the two towns are similar in many respects and behave in ways viewed as similar by external observers.

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Постулаты московской этнолингвистики

Author(s): Svetlana Michajlovna Tolstaja / Language(s): Russian Issue: 18/2006

The authoress presents the major assumptions, research methods and achievements of the Moscow ethnolinguistic school, created by Nikita I. Tolstoy in the 1970s. The school investigates and describes traditional spiritual Slavic culture on the basis of language, folklore, customs and beliefs. Research concerned with the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic heritage embraces the culture of all Slavs in its regional differentiation. Language as a system of signs is taken as the major access route to culture; culture is similarly treated as a semiotic system. This allows one to employ, for the study of culture, the conceptual apparatus and methods of linguistics.Language and culture are viewed as isomorphic and connected in the sense that linguistic signs (words) and cultural signs (rituals, artifacts etc.) complement and substitute for each other in their functions of coming to the knowledge of the world, communicating, operating in the society and others. However, language and culture differ in the nature of their respective signs: linguistic signs are specific, cultural signs are not, because symbolic meanings are also ascribed to purely practical behaviours and objects. Motivations of symbolic meanings may be captured in the behavioural and belief-related context: they are usually based on objective features of the referents, their appearance and functions. Signs of culture, too, are homonymic and synonymic. In the Moscow school, symbolic and mythological meanings are distinguished from purely linguistic meaning; they are treated as cultural, not linguistic connotation. The ethnolinguistic research of the school is open to inspiration from linguistic pragmatics, text analysis, cognitive and anthropological linguistics. Of two understandings of ethnolinguistics, a narrower and a broader one, it is the latter that has received more support in the Moscow circle: the conception treats linguistic, folk and ethnographic data as the basis for arriving at the mentality of a group. This is the common denominator of the two Slavic ethnolingusitic schools: in Moscow and Lublin, Poland. The most important achievements of Moscow ethnolinguists, who have so far published over three thousand studies, are presented as well.

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Этнолингвистические исследования в уральском университете

Author(s): Lyubov Feoktistova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 18/2006

The article offers an overview of ethnolinguistic studies conducted in the 'Uralic' school. The linguists from Ekaterinburg have been active in onomastic and dialectological research in the Russian North for forty five years, and fifteen years ago they broadened their scope onto folklore and folk culture, including the autochthon non-Slavic population. Their works belong to Slavic ethnolinguistics: they are especially close to the Russian ethnolinguistic school due to their historical profile. However, they are distinguished by their focus on Uralic data and the attention paid to onomastic research, initiated by Prof. Matveev and continued by his students. The research aims to reconstruct the linguistic worldview, the system of spatial orientation and the conception of sacral space, as well as to arrive at an ethnocultural interpretation of toponyms. Special attention is paid to the reconstruction of the image of a human being on the basis of data from peasant dialects. A number of works have been published so far in this domain: on national stereotypes, traits of character, such as wisdom and stupidity, laziness and diligence, meanness and generosity, as well as on people's morality (decency, attitude to work or property). The methodology of this conceptual research has been developed by Elena L. Berezovich. The analyses make use of the theory of semantic fields and are conducted strictly at the level of semantics, motivation and cultural symbolism. They concern the names of insects, victuals and basic qualities of taste (sour, salty, dry etc.), as well as lexical items which include the semantics of 'burning' and 'disappearance'. 'An Ethnoideographic Dictionary of the Central Ural Dialects', the first attempt to reconstruct the linguistic worldview of traditional Russian culture in its regional variant, is also published in Ekaterinburg.

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Белорусская этнолингвистика сегодня: реализация идей

Author(s): Nikolaj P. Antropov,Tat'jana Volodina / Language(s): Russian Issue: 18/2006

The article is an overview of ethnolinguistic research in Belarus between 1984 and 2006. The authors claim that Belorussian ethnolinguistics is diversified in the theoretical and the thematic sense. No single dominant trend can claim the name of a 'school'. The strongest links can be identified between Belorussian ethnolinguists and the Moscow ethnolinguistic school. Projects realized in various Belorussian institutions include several research themes: ethnolinguistic etymology and dialectology, ethnolinguistic geography (a Belorussian ethnolinguistic atlas is in preparation), combinations of ethnolinguistics and communication theory, phraseology, culture studies ('linguoculturology'), ethnography, folk studies and most recently cognitive studies. The ethnic diversity of the country motivates comparative research, which is a good Belorussian tradition. A comprehensive ethnolinguistic approach is especially fruitful in research on archaic forms of culture, in which the genetic and typological approaches merge. This line of research has borne fruit in the form of several monographs and two important encyclopedias: of Belorussian mythology (2004) and Belorussian folklore (2005).

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Niektóre problemy i pojęcia etnolingwistyki lubelskiej

Author(s): Jerzy Bartmiński / Language(s): Russian Issue: 18/2006

The practice of ethnolinguistics in Poland is two-pronged: sociological and ecological on the one hand, anthropological and cognitive on the other. The author represents the latter trend. In the article he juxtaposes and supplements with bibliographical information the key concepts elaborated by the Lublin ethnolinguists, between 1975 and 2005, in relation to 'Slownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych' (A Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols), partly published, partly in preparation. The concepts include: the connotation and cultural meaning of a word, cognitive definition, stereotype as a folk image of an entity, linguistic worldview, point of view and perspective, facet, profiling and experiential frame, the experiencing, conceptualizing and speaking subject. Emphasis is put on the connections between the Lublin ethnolinguistics and the American and Moscow ethnolinguistic traditions.

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Dialektologia a etnolingwistyka

Author(s): Halina Pelcowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2006

The article attempts to show the links between dialectology and ethnolinguistics, the elements of their interconnection and interpenetration. The authoress starts by presenting the assumptions of the two disciplines. She claims that they are linked by research on the spoken variety of language and the method of data collection. Dialectology has endorsed the ethnolinguistic conception of a cognitive definition, the linguistic worldview conception, the possibility of extending the scope of a peasant dialect by including the relevant customs, rituals and beliefs. Ethnolinguistics, in turn, has endorsed the dialectological focus on the spoken variety of language, the field methods of data collection, the conceptions of the centre and the periphery, as well as the mapping of customs and other cultural facts. Dialectological studies focus on the geographical range of linguistic facts, ethnolinguistics concentrates on their cultural aspects, but both dimensions are present in both disciplines. The inclusion of ethnolinguistic methods to dialectological studies and vice versa allows one to construct a many-sided picture of specific linguistic phenomena, as well as to explain their cultural and social contexts. Theoretical considerations are illustrated with samples of language collected in the Lublin region in the years 1990-2003 by the authoress herself.

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Etnolingwistyka ludowa, narodowa, porównawcza - koncepcje neofilologów i polonistów

Author(s): Anna Tyrpa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2006

Ethnolinguistics is understood in a variety of ways. In ethnolinguistic works of neophilologists, the languages of minorities are described in relation to the languages of majorities: ethnolinguistics dovetails here with dialectology in its preoccupation with the status of certain ethnolects. In the works of Polish linguists, especially important are the connections between language and culture. Three varieties of ethnolinguistics are identified: folk, national and comparative. The first of these is typical of the linguists associated with the 'Slownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych' (A Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols), compiled in Lublin; the second is found in the works of Gudavicius, for whom ethnolinguistics deals with 'the nation in the language'; the third type underscores the peculiarities of thinking characteristic of different nations. In the last sections of the article the authoress deals with the points of convergence between ethnolinguistics and ethnography, as well as between the former and dialectology. She also presents the figures of the pioneers of Polish ethnolinguistics.

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Rakija w bałkańskich rytuałach magicznych

Author(s): Karolina Bielenin / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2006

The authoress describes and analyzes the practices connected with raki on the basis of the data from Balkan folk culture, especially the data collected by herself in the Republic of Macedonia between 2000 and 2004. Following Anna Engelking, she distinguishes the rituals of creation ('a person wants something to happen'), the rituals of protection ('a person does not want something to happen') and the rituals of undoing ('a person wants something to un-happen'). The rituals of creation with the use of raki are performed in the Balkans on the day of St. Tryphon (Feb. 14) and are meant to bring about a good harvest of the vine, e.g. by pouring raki or burying a bottle with the drink under the vine's shoots. An example of the rituals of protection is e.g. drinking raki on the grave of the deceased in order to protect the living from the dead. In wedding celebrations the red raki is supposed to bring fertility to the newlyweds, whereas the sweet raki is meant to bring them success and luck (a sweet life). Like wine, raki is symbolically connected with the blood of Christ, for in a metonymic fashion it absorbs a part of the sacral symbolism of wine.

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Murzyn zrobił swoje..., czyli o pewnych typach metafor etnicznych

Author(s): Grażyna Zarzycka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2006

The article reports on research whose goal is to analyze the image of black people in the Polish press after 1989. The aim of this work is a presentation of 'ethnic metaphors' with the lexemes 'Murzyn' (Negro), 'czarny' (a black man), 'Kali' (the name of a black hero in the novel 'W pustyni i w puszczy' by Henryk Sienkiewicz), 'Olisadebe' (the surname of a popular African football player, a member of the Polish national team) and others. Metaphors have been classified into four major categories: the metaphors of harm, mask, identification and civilization. They are also classified by the key lexical elements and by the degree of conventionality. The analysis reveals the everyday negative stereotype of black persons embodied in many press metaphors. It also reveals, however, certain positive changes in Poles' attitudes toward black people resulting from the presence of Emmanuel Olisadebe in Poland and in the Polish media.

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Idee kognitywizmu jako podstawa badań porównawczych w zakresie semantyki

Author(s): Renata Grzegorczykowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 16/2004

New perspectives in comparative studies, especially in semantics, have arisen as a result of overcoming traditional structuralism, of viewing language in relation to culture and of the emergence of cognitive linguistics, which emphasizes the role of language in different conceptualizations of the world. Discussed are the following aspects of the cognitivist paradigm, especially valuable in comparative studies: the problem of the reconstruction of meaning (i.e. the formulation of the open cognitive definition) and the concepts used in descriptions of meaning (i.e. interpretive frame, linguistic worldview, connotation, profiling, stereotype and prototype). Two examples are analyzed: 'feminizm' (feminism) illustrates the problems of the cognitive definition, while 'tesknota' (longing) is a manifestation of different conceptualizations of comparable fragments of reality.

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