Perceptions of and attitudes towards regional varieties of Polish: views from two Polish provinces

Abstract

This paper reports a study of perceptions and attitudes relating to regional varieties of Polish. The methodology followed folk linguistic approaches to attitudes research. Respondents in two Polish provinces were asked to draw on a map of Poland where they thought the main regional varieties of Polish were spoken, and then to name and characterise these varieties in their own words. They were also asked to give correctness and social attractiveness ratings on semantic differential scales for a number of conceptually presented varieties. Students’ subjective maps of dialect division showed little correspondence with the dialect maps produced by Polish dialectologists. In the evaluative profiles, respondents focused mainly on foreignness, Polishness, and linguistic features of the perceived language varieties. Judgements of correctness and attractiveness appear to be influenced by Poland's socio-political situation, especially associations with Germanness and Russianness.

Keywords:

• dialectal awareness
• language attitudes
• sociolinguistic awareness
• perceptions
• folk linguistics
• Polish

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was carried out by Magdalena Miłobóg in 2009 for her MA Applied Linguistics dissertation at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University. We would like to thank Katarzyna Burek for her help with the coding.