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Abstract
Wilamowice (Wymysoü) is a small town in borderland of Silesia and Lesser-Poland (nowadays southern Poland). It is known because of the Wymysorys language, which is nowadays spoken by about 15 native-speakers. Vilamovians believe, that it is a relic brought by settlers from Flanders or Netherlands, who established the town in 13th century.
The Bielsko-Biała area has been investigated in the 19th and 20th century by German academics who wanted to prove the Germanness of this region. They called it "Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel"– The Bielsko-Biała language island. In opinion of most of them Wilamowice (Wymysoü) was a part of it. However, Vilamovians construct their identity in opposition to Germanness and to Polishness.
From anthropological perspective Vilamovians are an ethnic group. Its members have a strong feeling of belonging to it and awareness of their ethnic otherness. But even scholars, who describe Vilamovians as a separate ethnic or national group, represent the idea of Wilamowice as a closed, homogenic language island. I agree, that a language is an important marker of ethnic belonging, however I will try to present an alternative way of significance of the Wymysorys language for Vilamovian identity. According to my research (the data was obtained through narrative interviews and, later, semi-structured interviews), for both Vilamovians and inhabitants of surrounding villages it is not one particular language, but rather the multilingualism, that distinguished Vilamovians from their Polish and German-speaking neighbors.
I will also present the narratives about the postwar persecutions. The analysis indicates that the narration of being monolingual, or pretending to be, as it is “the safer way”, is predominant among Vilamovians these days. These results are not only an interesting issue for sociolinguistic investigation but can also be crucial for the understanding of negative attitudes of local people towards language revitalization programs.
Bio
Tymoteusz Król, (born 1993), assistant professor in Institute of Slavic Studies of Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland), postdoc in Centre for Regional Studies of University of Ostrava (Czech Republic). He is also a language revitalizer and activist of Wymysorys, a very small Germanic language in Southern Poland. His interests are language documentation and revitalization, sociolinguistics, folklore studies, analysis of nationalistic and homophobic discourse. His PhD thesis (defended in 2022) title was "Mountains, hills, cover us up. Analysis of memoirs of Vilamovians about Volksliste and postwar persecutions".