Die belarussische soziolinguistische Terminologie der 1890er–1920er Jahre. Teil I: Einführung. Soziolekte und Dialekte

Abstract

This article is the first part of a planned series of articles devoted to the study of Belarusian sociolinguistic terminology of the 1890s–1920s, the National Revival period. The aim of these articles is to demonstrate that Belarusian philologists, writers, publicists and politicians had already created numerous sociolinguistically relevant terms in their publications. The material for this study comes from early Belarusian grammar books and dictionaries, but also from collections of works of contemporary authors and chrestomathies of Belarusian language history. The sociolinguistic terminology of the Belarusian language has not yet been systematically recorded or thematically organised and analysed. In the planned articles, the relationship of the Belarusian language and society with such central factors as state, religion, culture and nation will be analysed. The terminological material will be interpreted against the background of the language policy of the time in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Poland, as well as from the perspective of modern sociolinguistics, the theoretical foundations of which were only laid in the 1960s. This first part of the article series contains a brief introduction to the early history of sociolinguistics in Eastern Slavic lands with special emphasis on Belarus and, above all, a detailed analysis of terms relating to the forms of the Belarusian language (sociolects and dialects). The sociolectal terms refer to professional and class languages, but also to the jargon of socially declassed groups and obscene expressions. The dialectological terms refer to the territorial distribution of the Belarusian language, its geographical differentiation, in particular its hierarchical division into dialect groups, central dialects and local dialects, as well as their linguistic characteristics and peculiarities. However, the analysed terms of the Revival period do not yet exhibit all the characteristics of modern systematic terminology, as they still have numerous shortcomings in terms of both content and form. Nevertheless, a considerable part of the terminology created at that time, the use of which had been banned in Belarus for over half a century, found its way into modern sociolinguistic terminology. This first part of the article series contains a brief introduction to the early history of sociolinguistics in Eastern Slavia with special emphasis on Belarus and, above all, a detailed analysis of terms relating to the forms of existence (sociolects and dialects) of the Belarusian language. The sociolectal terms refer to professional and class languages, but also to the jargon of socially declassed groups and obscene expressions. The dialectological terms refer to the territorial distribution of the Belarusian language, its geographical differentiation, in particular its hierarchical division into dialect groups, central dialects and local dialects as well as their linguistic characteristics and peculiarities. However, the analysed terms of the Revival period do not yet exhibit all the characteristics of modern systematic terminology, as they still have numerous shortcomings in terms of both content and form. Nevertheless, a considerable part of the terminology created at that time, the use of which had been banned in Belarus for over half a century, found its way into modern sociolinguistic terminology.