The cultural, informational, and situational filter in prewar "Pamiętniki chłopów" ["Peasants’ memoirs"]

The paper explores the language of "Pamiętniki chłopów" ["Peasants’ memoirs"], submitted for a competition announced by the Institute of Social Economy in Warsaw in 1933 and published between 1935 and 1936. The texts are generally written in the standard language, however heavily influenced by colloquial and dialectal Polish. The analysis focuses on colloquial and dialectal (or considered to be dialectal) vocabulary, as well as foreign vocabulary, sayings and proverbs which have been introduced into the text consciously, with appropriate metatextual commentary or as a result of code-switching. Methodologically, the analysis refers to the concept of filters - situational, cultural, and informational – proposed by Józef Kąś in 1994. The incorporation of dialectal and non-dialectal elements is conditioned sociolinguistically, and largely depends on the communicative competence of the author, their writing skills, and also on their valuation of rural and non-rural culture.