Abstract

The article discusses the concept of HOMELAND based on the material of Polish peripheral dialects on the territory of Voronovo district, Belarus. As a context, the author used selected dictionaries of other researchers of the “Polish language of Borderlands” in the Belarusian-Polish-Lithuanian borderlands, narratives of the inhabitants of the Myadel region (Belarus), memories of emigrants from the Vilnius region (Lithuania), as well as residents of Podlasie, Warmia and Mazuria (Poland). The author collected the material as records of continuous texts on various topics, it was not a purposeful study of vocabulary and semantics on the topic of the homeland. The method of cognitive definition proposed by Jerzy Bartminski, which provides for the reconstruction of the “mental object”, i.e. the maximum set of characteristics fixed in the language, was used in the article. As a result of the analysis of the material, similar features, indicated earlier by the researchers of this borderland, were found. Among the components of the imagination of HOMELAND, in the first place there was a warm attitude to native places (the emotional connection of a person with the place of birth and the period of childhood) and ancestors (including the deceased, the cemetery). The importance of the place of residence and neighbours (their own, ours, etc. people with similar experience), as well as religion (their own and neighbouring parishes, the cult of the Virgin Mary) was also emphasized. Less often, but expressively accentuated cultural (for example, traditions and language) and everyday signs of the concept (stability; private property; homeland where you can live). At the same time, more expressive than in other works, sketching of the ideological homeland by local residents was noticed (for the older it is the Second Polish Republic, for the younger – Belarus). According to the author, this is explained by the fact that among the respondents were, among other things, the residents whose ancestors participated in the uprising of 1863, fought with the Bolsheviks in the Polish-Soviet war, as well as those associated with the Home Army. In addition to the traditional point of view of an ordinary peasant/ petty nobleman, the perspective of a patriot not only of a “small homeland”, but also of a non-existent state (Second Polish Republic) is also considered.

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