Język śląskich utworów scenicznych z lat 1864-1922

Abstract

The treatise is a linguistic monograph of stage plays which appeared in Upper Silesia in the period of national revival in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries. The genesis of the plays was connected with the development of amateurish theatrical movement which achieved a great popularity and was not only one of the forms of social communication, but also became an effective factor of popularizing the desirable patriotic and moral attitudes among the Silesian threatened by denationalization. Among many plays staged by amateurish theatrical groups in that period there have been preserved about thirty plays which are the material basis of the paper. The authors of the texts were both regional writers like Karol Miarka, Juliusz Ligon and amateurs working in Silesian coal-mines on week days: Piotr Kołodziej, Franciszek Borys, Madej Simon, Augustyn Świder. The Silesian plays represent a kind of folk drama while taking into account both subject matters, characters’ types and composition together with stylistic shape. However, unlike the folk dramas — popular in other regions — in which dialectal mode of expression occurs, the folk characters in Silesian plays do not use a dialect. It results from important propaganda functions — those productions presented Old Polish customs opposed to German culture, and also popularized Polish not corrupted by influences of the Silesian dialect and German language. However, the folk hero’s type sodally determines the linguistic shape of Silesian plays — there occur some phonetic, inflexional, lexical and syntactic elements characterizing the folk speech but not connected with any specific dialect or occurring in every Polish dialectal surroundings. The effect of mode of expression worked out by Silesian authors is folk Polish of interdialectal character. One of the crucial problems of this study is an introduction of mechanisms of the modes of expression. The other important problem exposed in the paper is the introduction of genre conditions and conscious transformation of genre and stylistic pattern which for Silesian creators was contemporary all-Polish folk drama rising from Enlightenment traditions. Since stage plays are conventionalized texts, two types of construction — dialogue and monologue are used in them. The texts in the folk plays are enriched by solo and choral singing with the elements of stage movement. The dialogues considered as compositional units are composed after the example of ordinary communication and consist of the system of mutually conditioned and completing replicas and they are repeatedly complemented by the elements of „theatrical code” — gesture, sound speech background. The difference between the dialogue and the monologue reduces only to the number of characters appearing on the stage, whereas the structure of monologic text itself, in which the passive receiver of the communiqué has been the theatrical audience, reflects all crucial features of non-literary communication. The linguistic-stylistic analysis of Silesian folk plays has been enriched by the characterization of first names and surnames of stage characters submitted to propaganda purposes, and often corresponding to the conventionality of significant surnames. The last chapter of the study is devoted to the description of the characters who function in Silesian plays as negative heroes because they renounced their religion, ancestors’ customs and language in favour of uncritical imitating of German culture. The authors’ negative attitude to those characters is proved by the use of deforming mode of expression supposed to indicate that the characters are able to use neither Polish nor German and as a result they are rejected by both circles — the Silesian and German.