Od gwary po dyskurs

From dialect to discourse. The Polish-Czech border in Zaolzie in linguistic research Zaolzie, i.e. the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia since 1920, is the place of linguistic and cultural contact between an indigenous Polish population that speaks a dialect stemming from the south-Silesian dialect of Polish, and a Czech population that speaks various dialects of Czech, or the local dialect. Genetically identical to the dialect of Cieszyn in Poland, the Zaolzie dialect has been for many years under an increasing influence of Czech, especially in the area of vocabulary. Also changing is the mentality and the sense of ethnicity of the Poles of Zaolzie; this is particularly visible in the younger generation. The goal of this paper is to show the main streams in the study of the linguistic state of Zaolzie, in the past and in the present communicative situation influenced by various psychosocial and cultural factors. The paper emphasizes that researchers in language, ethnic identity and mentality face the important task of collecting and analysing written texts of various genres, and of preserving and recording public, informal and familial oral statements, based on which it will be possible to describe how the discourse of ethnic identity in Zaolzie has been shaped from 1920 till this day.