The paper discusses and analyses the situation of regional languages in Poland against the background of phenomena taking place in Europe. The phenomena discussed include language extinction, language revival and raising the prestige of linguistic varieties generally considered inferior to recognised languages, i.e. state, national or official ones.

The multifaceted, complex and historically variable relationships between the nation, the region and literature can be discussed from various points of view. In the paper, I focus on two aspects. The first one concerns the intertwining of national and regionalist ideas and its impact on the development of literary regionalism. The other one concerns regional literature as such and its contribution to the creation of a national narrative. In the paper, I demonstrate that the reference to the national context makes it possible to track once again the development of literary regionalism, as well as read regional works anew. This is linked to the contemporary revaluation of regional works and its treatment as an important voice in the debate on the civil society and the nation.

Kashubian, as a Proto-Slavic dialect, was similar to the Greater Poland and Lesser Poland dialects which with time provided the foundations for the Polish language. However, as early as in the 13th century, differences became noticeable resulting from the autonomous development of Kashubian on the periphery of the Slavic world. Language is one of the most important ethnic building elements manifested by the Kashubian people since the dawn of ethnic emancipation which started in the mid-19th century, when Florian Ceynowa, physician and father of Kashubian national empowerment, created the first Kashubian alphabet, normalised the spelling, compiled the grammar rules and started to write journalistic, scientific and literary texts. In the past, the Kashubians had long lacked the conviction that their vernacular had value. The joint work of many communities, undertaken for the sake of the linguistic status of Kashubian in the 1990s, led first of all to a change of the attitude of the users towards their own language, and subsequently to its recognition as a separate Slavic language. Kashubian was granted the political and legal status of a regional language in 2005. It satisfies mainly those who have adopted a hybrid identity characterised by being Kashubian in the regional aspect and Polish in the national aspect. However, that status is insufficient for Kashubians representing the na- tional option, who identify themselves as Polish citizens of Kashubian nationality.

The emergence of separate nationalities often entails standardisation of the language and an attempt to prove its multifunctional nature, while codification as such becomes one of the basic demands of ethnic movements striving towards emancipation. In her paper, the author analyses the process of emancipation of Silesian in the context of linguistic ideologies, studying above all the ideologies shared by Silesian ethnic leaders. The conclusions presented in the paper are based on analyses of numerous in-depth interviews conducted with Silesian ethnic leaders. This approach makes it possible to take into account, in the analysis of linguistic processes, the point of view of the users of the specific language and their linguistic awareness, and also makes it possible to seek relationships between linguistic awareness, language structure and social phenomena.

The paper dedicated to the phenomenon of Wilamowicean theatre is composed of two parts presenting a different research approach. A review written by a literature scholar of the latest performance in the Wilamowicean repertoire serves as the basis for commentary built around it by a sociolinguist, dedicated to the situation of the Wilamowicean language, its history and revival. The paper also presents other processes of revival of minor languages using theatrical tools.

The paper discusses the representation of the so-called Regained Territories in reportage and novels by Ziemowit Szczerek. The aim of the paper is to identify the ways of creating a caricatural imaginary geography of the Polish-German borderlands which Szczerek calls “Poniemiecja” [“Post-German lands”]. An analysis of the source material made it possible to determine the functions of the borderlands theme in Szczerek’s works (demythologisation, deheroisation, confrontation). The paper also presents strategies of revising the pioneer myth of the so-called Regained Territories and of representing the Polish-German relations in Szczerek’s works of fiction and non-fiction.

The fact that the Lemko language is placed in the ethnolinguistic Western Slavic area next to the Polish language, which is dominant from the sociolinguistic point of view, has had and continues to have a significant impact on its development. Consequently, the Lemko language, similarly to other (Slavic) micro-languages, should be considered susceptible to changes resulting from the impact of exogenous factors, which can be observed even on a morphological level, which is generally perceived as particularly resistant to external influences. However, research conducted on the basis of material from the spoken corpus of the Lemko language shows that not all linguistic changes currently taking place in that language have been caused by the impact of Polish.

The aim of the paper is to present selected aspects of integration (in the cultural sense) of the Arabic community in Poland in the context of Poland’s integration (migration) policy which Poland formally does not have at present. What Arabic and Polish respondents have to say about the integration process may be useful for the more efficient management of the immigration phenomenon.

The article presents the most important and the most interesting prose and poetry publications that appeared in 2018. Last year was marked by a dominance of well-known authors (such as: Marek Bieńczyk, Wiesław Myśliwski, Zyta Rudzka, Eustachy Rylski, Szczepan Twardoch, Krzysztof Varga, Janusz Pasterski, Marzanna Bogumiła Kielar, Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki) and proved that the Polish literary market was stable, but there was no place for new trends or spectacular literary debuts.

The paper briefly analyses representations of the city and “writing about the city” as reflected on in contemporary humanities, in relation to Katarzyna Taborska’s book Literatura miejsca. Piśmiennictwo postlandsberskie. [Literature of a place. Post-Landsberg writing].