Język codzienności zapisany w średniopolskich księgach sądowych

Abstract

The article examines the question of how the material from city archives in Silesia and Lesser Poland from the period between the 16th and 18th century can be used for research purposes. What is particularly interesting are court proceedings transcripts, which may be used to partially reconstruct the ways of communicating among members of municipal communities centuries ago. The analysis shows that the mechanisms of communication in everyday situations and casual contact have not changed a great deal; they have been based on dialogue structures with formally and semantically complementing units of the question and answer format. What has been a stable feature of these dialogues are elliptical sentences and anacoluthons, which are typical of informal contexts. Court registers, which contain descriptions of conflict situations, to a large degree reflect the image of life in past municipal communities, while the testimonies of witnesses heard in court proceedings perfectly illustrate the social background, relations among community members, and ways of thinking and of valuing from a few centuries ago.