Pamięć o Żydach w wielkich słownikach języka polskiego. Rekonesans. cz. II

Abstract

REMEMBRANCE OF JEWS IN GREAT DICTIONARIES OF POLISH LANGUAGE: RECONNAISSANCE

Nine centuries of Polish-Jewish contacts in all spheres of life left a mark in Polish. The author of the article decided to check how great and how durable this trace is, looking in the great dictionaries of the Polish language for units considered as carriers of the memory of Jews. The author asks the question which prejudges the fact that a certain unit of language can be considered as a carrier of the memory of Jews. Also, the author attempts to establish in which linguistic forms this Jewish element can be manifested in dictionaries. The trial analysis examined the presence of 240 carriers of memory (“verbal judaics”), sampled from journals, memoir literature and tourist guides published after 2000, in two dictionaries intended for the mass audience: the Dictionary of Polish edited by M. Szymczak, and An Alternative Polish Dictionary edited by M. Bańko. It turned out that these dictionaries recorded only 25% of the collected corps of verbal judaics, often depriving the definitions of these units of the Jewish component. The author reflects on the social consequences of this state of affairs and its relationship with the “collective narcissism” of the Polish society and the historical policy pursued by the Polish state.