GERMAN LOAN WORDS IN LITERARY DISCOURSE

Abstract

The nature of the German linguistic borrowings, the peculiarities of their functioning in the dialect and literary language, the approaches to adaptation and the role in the depiction of the inner world of the analyzed stories and novels were studied on the material of modern prose which describes the events of the last century. The emphasis is put on the natural process of borrowing from German language into dialects and literary language as a result of historical polyethnism of regions described, direct political and sociocultural contacts via Polish and Yiddish languages. The study is aimed at the determination of artistic functions of germanisms and their role in the creation of certain chronotopes, the representation of particular personages and system of characters. Loan words in the speech of the characters serve as one of the means of their characterization, which shows connection with a specific region, time and culture, forms of life and activities. The corpus of analyzed literary works shows the dynamics of constant changes in the composition of vocabulary borrowed from the German language: the archaisation and historisation, the replacement of these words by the lexis, borrowed from Russian, the emergence of new lexemes as one of the forms of cultural contacts, etc. Attention is also paid to the fact that the use of the words borrowed from the German language is motivated by the creative vision of the writers, the described epoch and the characterization of the personages. Words related to warfare are widely used in the descriptions of military actions of different times and is present in the speech of representatives of older generations. German loan words referring to everyday life, cooking, professional activities, interpersonal relations and entertainment prevail in the description of peacetime. In analyzed literary works these words are connected with the reminisces of the past, predominately with the interwar period, and its idealization, the importance of introduction of a small homeland into European history and culture.