On Multilingualism in the Czech Part of the Cieszyn/Těšín Silesia

Bogocz, Irena; Bortliczek, Małgorzata

doi:10.17651/SOCJOLING.29.3

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Tytuł: On Multilingualism in the Czech Part of the Cieszyn/Těšín Silesia

Abstrakt:

The present paper describes linguistic situation in the Cieszyn/Těšín Silesia on the Czech side of the border where Poles and Czechs live together. Assuming that many language codes are used here, including the Cieszyn/Těšín dialect, the authors investigated the sociolinguistic situation in Polish-minority schools in this region. The analysis of the vernacular used by students, who were 6–18 years old, enabled the authors to describe their colloquial speech, which includes the dialect as well as the elements of the Polish and Czech languages. Having analysed the transcripts, the authors came to the following conclusions: 1) the colloquial speech clearly differs from a traditional form of a dialect; 2) it is not the indicator of ethnicity of the speaker; 3) its usage depends on each individual communicative situation. The authors’ comments are illustrated by small parts of transcribed texts.