Henryk Jaroszewicz | University of Wroclaw (original) (raw)

Papers by Henryk Jaroszewicz

Człowiek - język - prawo. Studia legilingwistyczne, 2023

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza, 2023

The first decade of the 20th century saw two events that significantly affected the typology of l... more The first decade of the 20th century saw two events that significantly affected the typology of linguistic codes operating in the territory of the Polish language. The first event was closing the decades-long discussions on the status of Kashubian, treated in Polish linguistics either as a dialect of Polish or, less frequently, as a separate, independent West Slavic language. The legitimacy of further disputes on the subject was effectively thwarted upon the adoption in 2005 of the Law on National and Ethnic Minorities and Regional Language, granting the Kashubian language the status of the only Polish regional language ("The regional language within the meaning of the Law is the Kashubian language", ch. 4, article 19.2). The linguistic, rather than dialectal, position of Kashubian was emphasized in the afore-mentioned law by defining a regional language, in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, as a code that "differs from the official language of the state" and is not a "dialect of the official language of the state" (ch. 4, article 19.1.2). While the elevation of Kashubian to the status of a language became an event closing one of the most important discussions in contemporary Polish studies, another event opened a similar discussion. This is because in the first decade of the 21st century the status of the Silesian ethnolect, until then traditionally considered, not only in Polish studies, to be a dialect of Polish, was questioned. In the public debate and in the academic discussions, one increasingly encountered the view that Silesian has "transcended the definitional boundaries of dialect" [Wyderka 2014: 112] by transforming into a language independent of and separate from Polish. The thesis of the non-dialectal, linguistic status of the speech of Silesians was formulated mainly by circles of Upper Silesian socio-cultural activists, gathered around such organizations as the Tŏwarzistwo Piastowaniŏ

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza, 2022

In the contemporary Silesian-language communicative space, the dominant role is played by the śla... more In the contemporary Silesian-language communicative space, the dominant role is played by the ślabikŏrzowa orthography, i.e. the way of writing developed at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. This spelling system is used in most recent Silesian-language publications, advertising language, electronic media, computer software
and smartphones. The ślabikŏrzowa orthography owes its privileged position to its conservative form, the presence of clear and traightforward rules of usage and a relatively strong organisational, intellectual, scientific and economic background. However, the further development of ślabikŏrzowy literature is hampered by the lack of detailed normative materials (i.e. spelling dictionary, grammar).

Slavia Occidentalis, 2022

Over the past two decades, Silesian literature has been written in eleven different types of orth... more Over the past two decades, Silesian literature has been written in eleven different types of orthography, the most important of which are the classical, neo-Steuer and “slabikŏrzowa” orthographies. Other orthographic proposals, e.g. by D. Dyrda, B. Kallus, P. Kalinowski, H. Kaluza, R. Wencel, did not become popular and were abandoned rather quickly. As a result, contemporary Silesian literature was dominated by the “ślabikŏrzowa” spelling, gaining popularity due to its conservative form and the support of the most essential Silesian publishing houses. However, an obstacle to the complete stabilisation of Silesian orthography is the variant spelling of “ślabikŏrzowa” (“full “ślabikorz” and simplified “ślabikŏrz”) and no detailed, explicative normative works (i.e. orthographic dictionary, grammar).

Wydawnictwo Naukowe IKRIBL, 2022

“Spelling rules of the Silesian language. A Normative Study” The Silesian language is an independ... more “Spelling rules of the Silesian language. A Normative Study”
The Silesian language is an independent Slavic language that developed from the Silesian dialect group at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. From a genetic per-spective, together with Kashubian and Polish, Silesian belongs to the Lechitic group of West Slavic languages. There are four main reasons for treating Silesian as a separate language: the presence of a broad social group whose members identi-fy with the idea of Silesian linguistic independence; the polyfunctionality of Silesi-an and its presence in the public space; the existence of a rich and stylistically di-verse Silesian literature and an advanced degree of standardisation and codifica-tion. According to the official data taken from the National Census of Population and Housing of 2011, Silesian is spoken by 529,000 people in the territory of to-day’s Poland. Although the Silesian language has been included in the ISO 639-3 standard since 2007, where it has been assigned the code “SZL”, Polish legislation still treats it as one of four Polish dialect groups (along with the dialect group of Małopolska, Mazovia and Wielkopolska). The civic and parliamentary bills to change the status of Silesian, which have been submitted repeatedly since 2007, have been rejected at various stages of the work of the relevant committees of the Sejm. “Spelling rules of the Silesian language. A Normative Study” is a book that continues, develops and partially revises the rules of Silesian spelling adopted in 2009 and later implemented in “Gōrnoślōnski ślabikŏrz” published in 2010 and in Bogdan Kallus’ “Słownik gōrnoślōnskij gŏdki” which came out in 2015. However, the orthographic solutions contained in the book are based mainly on the author’s analysis of the language functioning in contemporary Silesian-language writing. A computerised lexical corpus of 1.05 million word tokens, yielding 119,000 original word types, was created for the research on the Silesian literary usage. The corpus consisted of forty-four texts – from a philological perspective – of the most valua-ble literary works written in the Silesian language and published between 2000 and 2020. Although “Spelling rules of the Silesian language. A Normative Study” is the result of the author’s work, its content was repeatedly consulted by a dozen or so Silesian writers, translators, publicists and language activists. During the codification of the orthographic norm in “Spelling rules of the Silesian language. A Normative Study”, an attempt was made to respect those solu-tions that have the highest frequency in contemporary Silesian literature. Prefer-ence was also given to forms with prestige status due to their affiliation with Silesi-an dialects and dialects with the greatest demographic, cultural and economic po-tential. At the same time, efforts were made to promote those linguistic features that distinguish the Silesian dialectal area within the West Slavic dialectal-language continuum. The result of using such selection criteria, which were at times quite difficult to reconcile, was the need to introduce the division of normative linguistic behaviours into exemplary and optional ones. The benchmark standard included those examples that most closely met the aforementioned requirements of frequen-cy, prestige and differentiality. Consequently, most of the orthographic and gram-matical forms considered exemplary can be combined with the central Silesian (Gliwice-Toszek) dialects and the inter-dialect of the Upper Silesian conurbation. Significantly, the solutions included in the model standard are usually appropriate to the writing idiolects of the most important and – at present – most active Silesi-an-speaking writers and translators. The optional norm, on the other hand, included those forms that are characterised by lower prestige and are less frequent in con-temporary Silesian literature. This typically refers to the linguistic behaviours spe-cific to Opole and Rybnik dialects. However, outside the norm of the Silesian lan-guage were those linguistic features that were not confirmed in the aforementioned corpus or that were specific to the idiolect of a single author. In most cases, we refer to phenomena specific to Cieszyn dialects (e.g., “jabłonkowanie”), less often to recessive features specific to other areas of Upper Silesia (e.g., “mazurzenie”, softness anticipation). Identifying the exemplary and optional behaviours in the area of Silesian orthography (and partially grammar) has constituted the Silesian language as an ethnolect with a relatively inclusive norm, accepting a relatively wide range of possible communicative behaviours. The orthography used in “Spelling rules of the Silesian language. A Nor-mative Study” is based on the general principles adopted in Polish spelling, using various notation rules interchangeably: mainly phonetic, morphological, historical and usage-related notations. The grapheme system of the Silesian language consists of thirty-six simple graphemes: A a Ã ã B b C c Ć ć D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l Ł ł M m N n O o Ō ō Ô ô Ŏ ŏ Õ õ P p (Q q) R r S s Ś ś T t U u (V v) W w Y y (X x) Z z Ź ź Ż ż and twelve com-plex graphemes (digraphs and trigraph): Ch ch Ci ci Cz cz Dz dz Dzi dzi Dź dź Dż dż Ni ni Rz rz Si si Sz sz Zi zi. In most cases, the phonetic value of graphemes used in Silesian is identical to the value of analogous graphemes present in standard Polish. The optional Silesian letters Ã ã, Ô ô, Ŏ ŏ, Õ õ act as homo-graphs, unifying the phonetically diverse continuants of single phonemes on the graphic plane. Instead, the Ō ō grapheme, absent from the Polish language, renders a voicing characteristic of the Silesian linguistic space, the so-called raised [ȯ]. The punctuation rules of the Silesian language as well as the rules for using uppercase and lowercase letters are almost entirely consistent with the solutions used in Polish. The more essential innovations are the use of a capital letter in the names of city residents (Bojszowiŏk, Chorzowiŏk, Glywiczōn) and the spelling of the names of historical events in lowercase only (francuskŏ rewolucyjŏ [the French Revolution], trzecie ślōnske powstanie [the Third Silesian Uprising], piyrszŏ krziżowŏ wyprawa [the Third Crusade]).

Slavica Wratislaviensia, 2022

The lexicon of contemporary Silesian literary language. Preliminary studies of material covering ... more The lexicon of contemporary Silesian literary language. Preliminary studies of material covering 2,500 of the most frequent lexemes in Silesian literature made it possible to identify six main thematic domains. Thus, the most numerous words are the lexical forms related to the functioning of humans: to the mental and emotional dimension (629 lexemes) and the biological dimension (490 lexemes). Other forms are related to human participation in social life (465), the material world and ways of interacting with it (384), space and ways of moving in it (261), time and temporal features (151). The analysis of the Silesian lexicon proved the existence of intellectualised vocabulary (abstract forms, terms), numerous synonymous forms and a high frequency of Germanisms (14%). A noticeable part of the Silesian lexicon (15%) is entirely foreign to contemporary standard Polish language. The remaining group of Silesian lexemes (except for a small number of indeclinable words) differs to a greater or lesser extent from their Polish counterparts-mainly in terms of their phonetics and inflection.

Slavica Wratislaviensia, 2017

Montenegrin language is the youngest Slavonic language standard. The creation of Montenegrin lang... more Montenegrin language is the youngest Slavonic language standard. The creation of Montenegrin language ultimately ended the process of disintegration of Serbo-Croat in the national languages. The current language situation in Montenegro is characterized by heterogeneous language policy. In the country there are three groups of linguists that have radically different views on the past, present and future the speech of Montenegrins. Autonomists (A. Čirgić, V. Nikcevic) believe that Montenegrin language is genetically and systematically separate entity, whose standard should be radically changed. Evolutionists (R. Glušica, I. Lakić) treat speech of Montenegrins as a standard code that is part of a polycentric language Serbo-Croatian, which standard only should be modificated. Integrationists (J. Stojanović, D. Bojović) recognize the Montenegrin language as political being and say that in the Montenegro operates only one standard language — standard Serbian. At the moment, the greatest influence over official language policy have autonomists. Thanks to Montenegrin education authorities the autonomists are officially codifying the Montenegrin language and prepare the curriculum of Montenegrin language for primary and secondary schools.

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza, 2020

The article provides the characteristics and classification of the most frequentative verbs and v... more The article provides the characteristics and classification of the most frequentative verbs and verb phrases used in contemporary Silesian literature. It has been established that the largest number of the studied forms is related to the different ways people physically influence the reality that surrounds them and mental processes (i.e. cognitive, evaluative and descriptive ones). The lexical diversity between Polish standard lexis and Silesian literary usage amounts to fifty-eight percent. What influences this diversity is the presence of words of German and Czech origin which amount to almost a tenth of the Silesian lexicon. Slightly less than half of the verbs are derived forms, in the vast majority formed through prefixation, aspect suffixation and postfixation. The semantic and morphological structure of the studied verb forms demonstrates a farreaching intellectualisation and formal complexity of the Silesian lexicon.

Slavia Occidentalis, 2019

Criticism of attempted emancipation of the language spoken in Silesia – the academic (linguistic)... more Criticism of attempted emancipation of the language spoken in Silesia –
the academic (linguistic) aspect

Despite the numerous attempts made in the 21st century at gaining linguistic independence, the Silesian ethnolect still enjoys the official status of a dialect. Lack of success in the attempted emancipation
should be attributed to the linguistic policy adopted by the Polish authorities and political elites. The attempts at emancipation of the language spoken in Silesia have been subjected to criticism on many
levels of the social discourse including the academic level. However, a detailed analysis of the presented arguments is evidence that there are no objective, linguistic premises that questioning promotion of the
Silesian ethnolect to the status of a regional language is unsubstantiated.

Zeszyty Łużyckie, 2019

The development of the Upper Silesians’ language in the 21st century. A sociolinguistic sketch As... more The development of the Upper Silesians’ language in the 21st century. A sociolinguistic sketch
As a consequence of complex sociolinguistic processes, the Silesian ethnolect was elevated to the status of a language at the beginning of the 21st century. There were four factors which turned to be of paramount importance for the transformation of the Silesian dialect into the Silesian language: (1) the fact that its users developed the linguistic awareness of language identity; (2) the fact that Silesian started to be used in the public space; (3) the development of Silesian literature with the diversity of its forms; (4) the beginning of the codification process. In the last two decades, there have been many important works in Silesia which challenged the stereotypical thinking of Silesian culture and stimulated its further development. Among the most important literary and linguistic achievements in this period were the emergence of the general Silesian writing system (the so-called ślabikŏrzowy szrajbōnek), the development of translation activity (e.g. the translation of the New Testament into Silesian) as well as the development of the Internet platform silling.org which includes the Silesian language corpus and a bilingual automatic Polish-English translator. However, it is difficult to predict whether the dynamics of the development of the Silesian language will be maintained further. Although much depends on the linguistic policy pursued in Poland and the potential elevation of Silesian to the status of a regional language, it seems that the fate of this ethnolect relies on the Silesian people themselves – their will to preserve their cultural identity and their creative potential.

Slavica Wratislaviensia, 2020

For more than ten years the Silesian ethnolect has been rapidly developing. During this time, its... more For more than ten years the Silesian ethnolect has been rapidly developing. During this time,
its polyvalence, the level of codification and the scope of its use have been radically expanded. This
code is used by a relatively big number of speakers (530,000) who consider it a separate language
and not a local dialect of Polish. The legal status of the Silesian ethnolect depends on the linguistic
policy implemented in modern Poland. At present, however, there is no political will to elevate this
code to the status of an independent language.