Functioning of dialect in the awareness of its speakers

The aim of the text is to present the way village inhabitants perceive the local dialect which they speak. It also aims to answer the question of whether they are aware of the differences between their own language code and the general code that they encounter every day. The language material for the analysis was obtained through casual conversations and interviews with the inhabitants of two Polish parishes: Ciężkowice and Zakliczyn on the Dunajec (located between the city of Tarnow and Nowy Sącz). The inhabitants of the researched area rarely notice the specifics of their own language and are able to consider the language code they use as a dialect. It may partially result from their language unawareness, and partially from the fact that the dialect language code is more and more often considered as inferior to the general one. The oldest dialect speakers perceive the language they have been speaking all their life as natural. They are aware, however, that it is a bit different from the general Polish language, nevertheless, this difference seems to be of the aesthetic nature to them. Dialect is sometimes perceived as wrong or incorrect language behaviour (pšekrůncańe). The inhabitants of the researched area define dialect as a language code that is not the general Polish language, and different from their own system mostly in terms of lexis and phonetics. In the young generation the evaluation of dialect is much less favourable when compared to the general Polish (or "TV" Polish).The unfavourable evaluation of dialect may result from the lack of ethnographic autonomy of the researched area, since it does not stand out by having special material or spiritual culture. In addition, its language has features of a transitional dialect and therefore, may be perceived as not very distinct or expressive.