Granice języka : samookreślenia Polaków na Białorusi i Litwie

ENThe book analyses the idiolects of different aged persons who live in the Polish-Belarusian-Lithuanian borderland and who spontaneously characterise themselves as Poles. Basing on their self-description, the aim is to show the numerous individual identifications behind the statement “I am a Pole”. This social-cultural belonging correlate in different ways with the second statement: “I speak Polish”. The 22 interviewees are members of six families and they all live in an area that belonged to Poland in the interwar period. Based on those interviews the interviewees' idiolects, their usage of language and their cultural identification among different generations, but also among regions are presented. From every family the author recorded at least three members presenting different generations. All interviewees declared at the first meeting that they are Poles and they were all able to communicate fluently in Polish. The interviews were all provided by the author according to a semi-standardized guide and evaluated qualitatively with the program MAXQDA11. For the analysis of the interviews the core questions were: To what extend the idiolect of the interviewees differs from standard Polish? What has – according to the interviewees – strong influence on the preservation of the Polish language in Belarus or Lithuania? How do the interviewees judge the vitality of Polish in their region? What is their individual language attitude? How do they describe the imagined picture of Poland as a country and the contacts the interviewees have with the reverence nation?.