LAURA GERŽOTAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language, Vilnius University

Research areas: areal studies of the Baltic languages, geolinguistics, dialectology.

DIALECTAL SELF-AWARENESS OF YOUNG SPEAKERS OF THE ŠIAULIAI AND PANEVĖŽYS DIALECTS: BORDERS IN MENTAL MAPS¹

Dialectal Self-Awareness of Young Residents of Šiauliai and Panevėžys: Borders in Mental Maps

ANNOTATION

The article discusses a study of the dialectal self-awareness of young speakers of the Šiauliai and Panevėžys dialects. The research material consists of data from one of the most important tasks in perceptual dialectology—the mental map of dialects.

Analysis of material collected in cities located on or near the dialect boundary showed that the binary classification of Lithuanian dialects presented by dialectologists differs from that which exists in the self-awareness of ordinary language users. Young respondents tend to assign to the Aukštaitian dialect only a small part of the area attributed to it in dialectologists’ studies. A considerable portion of the remaining Aukštaitian dialect territory is assigned to the Dzūkian and Suvalkian dialects, which are regarded as separate dialectal units.

KEYWORDS: perceptual dialectology, mental map, dialect classification, ethnographic region

¹ I sincerely thank Prof. Dr. Danguolė Mikulėnienė and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Daiva Aliūkaitė for their valuable advice in preparing this article.

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ANNOTATION

The article introduces the research into the dialectal self-awareness of the young inhabitants of the cities of Šiauliai and Panevėžys. The data of the dialectal mental map, which is one of the most important tasks in perceptive dialectology, serve as research material.

The analysis of the material collected at the border of the dialects or in the nearby towns indicated that the binary classification of the Lithuanian dialects given by dialectologists and the one existing in the self-awareness of the ordinary language users is different. The young respondents tend to attribute the Aukštaitian dialect to a small area of the dialect which is specified in the works of dialectologists. Quite a large remaining territory of the Aukštaitian dialect goes to the people of Dzūkija and Suvalkija which are considered separate dialectal units.

KEYWORDS: perceptual dialectology, mental map, classification of dialects, ethnographic region.

At the beginning of the 21st century, research summarizing not only the objective (scientifically grounded) but also the subjective (based on self-awareness) image of a dialect or region increased not only in Lithuanian dialectology but also in ethnology.

Among linguists, the most extensive and comprehensive studies to be mentioned are those by Daiva Aliūkaitė (Aliūkaitė 2007: 211–223; 2008; 2009: 164–179; 2011: 209–220). Drawing on the theoretical principles of perceptual dialectology, they reveal not only the objective features of East Aukštaitian Anykščiai dialect speech (as described by scholars), but also its subjective features (as perceived by ordinary language users), and also touch on the subjective isoglosses distinguishing dialects that exist in the self-awareness of ordinary users.

Similar allusions also appear in ethnologists’ studies devoted to questions of self-awareness¹. Nearly a decade ago, a study conducted by Petras Kalnius along the dialectologists’ designated boundary between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects showed that “for today’s Samogitians, the most important criterion in identifying themselves and distinguishing themselves from non-Samogitians is not their place of residence, [...] but a different way of speaking” (Kalnius 2006: 116). It was established that “the overwhelming majority of respondents do not know [...] the boundary between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects recognized by linguists [...]. In their view, Samogitia ends where residents who speak differently from us begin, whose speech, they believe, deviates somewhat from the norm” (Kalnius 2006: 116). The conclusion was that “if the boundary between dialects identified by linguists is taken as a reference line, the self-awareness isophone fluctuates on either side of it within a strip nearly 40 km wide” (Kalnius 2006: 116). The area of Samogitian ethnic self-awareness has contracted considerably; its emerging periphery includes substantial areas on the northern and southern fringes of the Samogitian dialect.

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with the surrounding areas of Rietavas, Palanga, Kretinga, Mažeikiai, Akmenė, Raseiniai, and Tauragė (Petrulis 2005: 167–168; Kalnius 2006a: 78–80).

Studies have established that Aukštaitians, too, define their regional cultural identity through language (Savoniakaitė 2003: 121–126; 2007: 180). It should be noted that locating the area of Aukštaitian dialectal (rather than regional) self-awareness is not simple, since the names of dialects used in everyday speech only partly coincide with those used by dialectologists: in both cases, Samogitians refers to a group of people living in the same or nearly the same territory. Aukštaitians usually refers only to most of the Western Aukštaitian Šiauliai and Eastern Aukštaitian dialect areas in the classification of Lithuanian dialects. People from the remaining Aukštaitian dialect area are generally called Dzūkians and Suvalkians (or Suvalkai) (Papaurelytė, Župerka 2010: 186–187).

The subject of this article is the mental dialect maps² of students in grades 9–12 at secondary schools in Šiauliai and Panevėžys.

The aim is to analyze the representations of dialects that reveal the dialectal self-awareness of students in different major cities.

The research material consists of questionnaire data from a map-based task completed by 284 students from Šiauliai and Panevėžys gymnasiums, collected as part of the project The Place of Standard Language on the Mental Map of the Lithuanian Language³⁴. The article draws on material from the first task of the questionnaire prepared during the study, Assessment of Dialectal Speech and Standard Language (see Fig. 1).

On a map showing municipal boundaries and most of their centers⁵, students had not only to mark where dialects are spoken, but also to specify which dialect and evaluate dialectal speech.

A review of questionnaires completed by young respondents surveyed during the project not only in Šiauliai and Panevėžys but also in other Lithuanian towns (Kretinga, Biržai, Kupiškis, and Merkinė) shows that all students completed the map task

² In perceptual dialectology, the concept of a mental map (Eng. Mental Map) refers to the image of a place or group of places that emerges in the minds of ordinary language users. In this way, the spatial-linguistic awareness of ordinary members of a language community is revealed (Diercks 2002: 52; Aliūkaitė 2009: 166). A mental map of dialects (Eng. Mental Map of Dialects) can be described as a subjective classification of dialects (Inoue 1999: 161).

³ The project is funded by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. The project leader is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Daiva Aliūkaitė.

⁴ The first map task was not completed—that is, 10 percent of Šiauliai students and 2 percent of Panevėžys students did not mark anything on the maps.

⁵ In perceptual dialectology, when the map technique is used (see Preston 1989; 1999; xxiii–xl; 1999a: 359–373 for more detail), participants are given blank maps (see Evans 2002: 76–83) or maps with the boundaries of the largest administrative territorial units (see Long 1999: 178) and major cities marked to make orientation easier (see Dailey-O’Cain 1999: 228).

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TASK

1. On the map, mark (outline, color, or otherwise distinguish) where people speak dialectally (use italics to indicate which dialect, and comment on its use—is it beautiful or ugly, correct or incorrect, etc.)

FIG. 1. The questionnaire’s first map task

FIG. 2. Example of the dialect areas marked by Panevėžys students (Pn_1_V10)⁸

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very similarly. The young respondents marked the maps in three different ways. The first group comprises maps showing only marked regional language areas or zones⁶ where dialect is spoken. The second group includes maps on which students not only marked areas where dialect is used but also labeled them in some way, for example: Samogitian dialect, Samogitians, Suvalkiečiai, Aukštaitians, Dzūkian dialect, and so on. The maps in the third group are distinguished by the fact that they divide the Lithuanian-language area into dialects. Students’ comments were found alongside maps in all groups. This classification of maps will also be followed in this study. Each of the identified groups—in this case, comprising map data from students in Šiauliai and Panevėžys—is further subdivided and discussed in greater detail.

Maps showing language areas where dialect is spoken. By underlining, circling the centers of individual language areas, or coloring the entire area of one zone or another where dialect is spoken, without specifying which dialect, maps were marked by 54 percent of students in Šiauliai and 26 percent of students in Panevėžys⁷ (see Fig. 2).

⁸The largest share of this map group consists of maps on which the marked language zones are generally associated, or may be associated, by any language user with a particular dialect (and often with an ethnographic region as well).

It is likely that the language centers of western Lithuania most frequently indicated as dialect-speaking areas—especially by Šiauliai students—such as Plungė and Telšiai, located in the heart of the Samogitian ethnic identity area, were undoubtedly associated by the students with the Samogitian dialect (or the Samogitian ethnographic region). In addition to these, neighboring centers marked fairly frequently on the map were probably also considered Samogitian-speaking, for example: Mažeikiai, Kretinga, Šilalė⁹.

As a review of all the questionnaires shows, the locations where the Aukštaitian dialect is marked, as well as groups of locations forming a continuous area, are in the students’ perception partly or even

⁶ An. Regional Speech Zones (žr. Preston 1999: xxxiv).

⁷ To avoid distorting the exact percentages, ambiguously marked maps were excluded. They account for 6 percent of all maps.

⁸ The coded abbreviations for the study participants used in the article are: Šiaul – participants from Šiauliai Gymnasium; Pn – participants from Panevėžys Gymnasium. Numbers separated by hyphens denote groups of students belonging to different grades. The letters M and V indicate the participants’ gender. The numbers following the letters indicate questionnaire numbers.

⁹ It was not possible to determine precisely which district municipalities where dialect is spoken were most frequently identified by students (that is, to provide statistical data), because several features of the map may have confused them: the placement of district municipality center names, for example, Akmenė. The students likely associated this label not with the territory of the municipality to which it belongs, but with the territory of the nearer Telšiai District Municipality. It is likely that marking was further complicated for students by the fact that the centers of some municipalities delineated on the map were not indicated, for example: Rietavas, Tauragė, Pakruojis, Kupiškis, or Ukmergė.

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fully coincides with the boundaries of the Aukštaitija ethnographic region. Therefore, the places in northern and northeastern Lithuania that the students of both cities particularly often marked on their maps must undoubtedly have been associated with this dialect (i.e., Aukštaitian): Pasvalys, Biržai, Panevėžys, Utena, Rokiškis, Anykščiai, Molėtai, and Ignalina.

In the southern and southwestern parts of the Lithuanian-speaking area (see Fig. 2), as the students’ markings on the maps show, dialect is most often spoken in an area encompassing the environs of Vilkaviškis, Marijampolė, Alytus, Lazdijai, or also Varėna. In the absence of comments, and thus without additional information, it is difficult to say which dialect (Aukštaitian) or region (Dzūkija or Suvalkija) the centers of the linguistic areas within this area might have been associated with.

On a dozen or so other maps in this group, students from Šiauliai (no such markings were recorded on maps made by students from Panevėžys) indicated that dialect is spoken only in their native Šiauliai (i.e., linguistic homeland¹⁰) or, less often, also in the neighboring environs, for example, in the territories of Plungė, Telšiai, Akmenė, Kelmė, and Radviliškis. It is possible that students associated the linguistic homeland with a dual dialectal expression—Samogitian (as indicated by the additional marking of the environs of Plungė and Telšiai west of Šiauliai) and Aukštaitian (Radviliškis)—not only because it does not differ much from the variety they themselves use. From a dialectal perspective, the awareness shaped by television, radio, and the press—that the Šiauliai region is neither entirely Samogitian nor entirely Aukštaitian—may have helped this manifold linguistic expression become established in their minds.

Some maps (there were an equal number from each city) indicate that dialect is spoken throughout, or almost throughout, Lithuania (the whole or almost the whole country is outlined, respectively), or only in the country’s major cities and their environs. On these maps, students did not identify any dialect with areas in the central parts of Lithuania (Kėdainiai, Ukmergė, Jonava, Širvintos, and Kaišiadorys) or in the southeast (Švenčionys, Vilnius, and Šalčininkai). This can be explained by the fact that cities where enormous factories under union-wide jurisdiction were built during the Soviet era were not considered dialect zones, even though not only residents of nearby cities came there to work. The southeastern part of the Lithuanian-speaking area, with its large number of non-Lithuanian-speaking residents, had been left blank even on dialectologists’ maps. Until the beginning of the 21st century, the question of the dialectal character of regions was not raised in Lithuanian dialectology (see Mikulėnienė, Meiliūnaitė 2014).

The maps in this group were not commented on extensively. The students from Panevėžys provided the most numerous and fairly detailed comments on their maps. Some minor differences can be discerned between the views of students from the different cities. Positive, mostly generalizing comments predominate on the maps made by students from Šiauliai,

¹⁰ An. Linguistic Homeland (žr. Diercks 2002: 51).

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for example: “All dialects are beautiful because they are a legacy. They are all distinctive and differ from the standard language” (Šiaul_1(2)_M13), “I have a positive opinion of all dialects. Every person is unique, and their dialect adorns them” (Šiaul_2(2)_M16), “All dialects are different and interesting in their own way” (Šiaul_2(2)_M13). In addition, according to the students from Šiauliai, speech in the Samogitian dialect area, as well as in Samogitian-speaking areas that were not named, is not very easy to understand and is incorrect, but beautiful: “The Samogitian dialect is beautiful in its own way, although it is not very correct” (Šiaul_1(2)_M11), “I find the Samogitian language complicated, ‘distorted,’ but beautiful. We Šiauliai people speak with ‘cut-off endings’” (Šiaul_3(3)_V16), “[Mažeikiai, Plungė, Telšiai] beautiful, incorrect”¹¹.

Comments written about particular areas predominate along the edges of the maps made by students from Panevėžys. Dialectal speech is evaluated not only according to the criteria of beautiful or ugly, correct or incorrect, but also understandable or incomprehensible, funny, interesting, and strange: “[Šiauliai] beautiful,” “[Panevėžys] funny,” “[Utena] ugly, incorrect,” “[Kaunas] beautiful, correct” (Pn_1_M20), “[Rietavas] very beautiful, incorrect,” “[Panevėžys] dialect is funny, grates on the ears, incorrect” (Pn_1_M19). Only a few maps indicate that the speech in Panevėžys and its environs, that is, linguistic kin, is incorrect (Pn_1_V10, Pn_1_M19).

It is noteworthy that, in the minds of students from both cities, the incorrectness of the Samogitian dialect is associated with incomprehensibility (see also Aliūkaitė, Švarcienė 2009: 269), although exactly what is incomprehensible is not explained in greater detail. The incorrectness of the Aukštaitian dialect is attributed to linguistic reasons, primarily its “cut-off” or, as it is described, “bitten-off” endings.

Maps with areas marked and identified in dialectal terms.

The maps in the second group differ from those in the first in that the pupils (18% in Šiauliai and 38% in Panevėžys) also wrote down which dialect was spoken in the linguistic regions they had identified (see Fig. 3).

Here, as in the maps in the first group, the centres of linguistic areas in western Lithuania are marked most frequently (as reflected in the Šiauliai pupils’ questionnaires) and are fairly easily associated with the Samogitian dialect: Plungė, Telšiai, Kretinga, and others. In the area around Šiauliai, that is, in the linguistic kinship area, they say that Aukštaitian is spoken. Pupils’ attitudes such as “the Šiauliai dialect is beautiful” (Šiaul_1(2)_M07) and “beautiful, because I speak it myself” (Šiaul_3(3)_M06) indicate that the so-called dialect inferiority complex¹² is not characteristic of them, and that the participants feel linguistically secure. Nevertheless,

¹¹The pupils’ comments—that what is correct is not necessarily evaluated positively—are borne out by Fumio Inoue’s findings from a study of British respondents’ perceptions of dialects (Inoue 1999: 152).

¹² An. Dialect (inferiority) Complex (žr. Inoue 1999: 148).

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FIG. 3. Example of areas marked on maps and associated with a dialect (Pn_1_M06)

Attitudes towards their native localities were expressed only rarely in the maps drawn by pupils from both cities. It is difficult to say whether this observation would also hold true on the basis of a larger sample.

Pupils from Panevėžys more often identified prototypical Aukštaitian linguistic zones. Their maps also frequently marked the area around their native Panevėžys. The pupils evaluated the dialect spoken there in a somewhat broader context that included neighbouring speech areas; for example, the Aukštaitian dialect spoken in Pasvalys and Panevėžys was described as “ugly, incorrect, with clipped endings” (Pn_1_M57), whereas that spoken in Radviliškis, Panevėžys, Anykščiai, and Utena was described as “very beautiful, I like it” (Pn_1_M57). In addition to Panevėžys, the centres of several other regions—Biržai, Pasvalys, and Anykščiai—were identified as Aukštaitian.

In the remaining part of the Lithuanian-speaking area, people speak not the Aukštaitian dialect but, as the pupils’ comments show, the Suvalkian and Dzūkian dialects, distinguished on an ethnographic basis. According to the pupils, the Suvalkian dialect is spoken mainly around Kazlų Rūda, Marijampolė, and Vilkaviškis, while the Dzūkian dialect is spoken around Varėna and Alytus, which lie in the core of the Dzūkija cultural region (Ragauskaitė, Daugirdas 2010–2011: 23).

It should be noted that pupils marked a large proportion of the maps assigned to the group under discussion very unclearly. On some maps, where the markings are fairly clear

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FIG. 4. Example of an area marked on the map and (not) assigned to dialects (Pn_1_M83)

dialect areas are marked and named precisely, but there are always some areas about which nothing is written (see Fig. 4).

In other maps, most often Panevėžys pupils, having distinguished linguistic regions where, in their view, dialects are spoken in various ways, would usually describe their dialect at the edges of the maps as follows: “in northeastern Lithuania, Aukštaitian is spoken. In the northwest—Samogitian” (Šiaul_2(2)_M02, Pn_1_M15) (see Fig. 5).

In the maps themselves (see Fig. 5), the shaded areas assigned to one dialect or another are often not clearly distinguished. It is difficult to tell from such maps where pupils imagine the boundary between the northwest (i.e. Samogitian) and the east (i.e. Aukštaitian) to lie; therefore, it is difficult to draw conclusions about pupils’ perception of the dialectal affiliation of some linguistic areas, and thus about their dialectal self-awareness.

The maps of the first and especially the second group (even when marked unclearly) show that the binary system (Samogitian and Aukštaitian) is not the only one firmly established in pupils’ minds: a four-part dialect system based on ethnographic divisions is also firmly established—Samogitians, Aukštaitians, Dzūkians, and Suvalkians (Suvalkai) (see Fig. 6).¹³

¹³ The same results were obtained in studies of young Samogitians’ attitudes, as well as those of students in various cities (Aliūkaitė 2011: 211; 2013: 12).

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FIG. 5. Example of an area assigned to dialects but marked unclearly on the map (Pn_1_M37)

It predominates in the maps made by secondary-school pupils in both cities¹⁴. Only a few maps (Pn_1_M30, Pn_1_M31) indicate that the southern and southwestern parts of the Lithuanian-speaking area are also Aukštaitian in dialectal terms.

Only one pupil knows that, in ethnographic terms, the Lithuanian-speaking area is divided into five rather than four regions¹⁵. In the available maps, the zone corresponding to the southern part of the aforementioned fifth region, i.e. Lithuania Minor,

¹⁴ The results of a survey conducted in 2010 as preparatory work for the project “The Lithuanian Language: Ideals, Ideologies, and Identity Shifts” showed that, in the minds of ordinary language users, the binary classification of Lithuanian dialects is increasingly supplemented by two members: the Dzūkian and Suvalkian dialects. It is thought that such classification, on the one hand, reflects a certain level of knowledge about the division of the Lithuanian-speaking area into regions and, on the other, that not all dialectal features on the basis of which Lithuanian dialects are distinguished are equally salient to every language user. Features that do not normally serve this function can also act as distinguishing features, for example, the so-called dzūkavimas (Aliūkaitė 2013: 22). This four-part dialect system was adopted in order to discuss the results of an analysis of Lithuanian dialects in the country’s cities (for more details, see Ramonienė, Krupickaitė 2013: 16–17, 40–53; Krupickaitė, Baranauskienė 2013: 40–51).

¹⁵ The Šilutė District Municipality is also assigned to the Lithuania Minor region in one map drawn by a third-group pupil from Panevėžys (Pn_1_V21).

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FIG. 6. Lithuanian dialects from the perspective of school students (Šiaul_1(2)_M25)

for example, parts of the Jurbarkas area, were more often named by the students as Aukštaitian (Suvalkian), less often as Samogitian, or were not marked or commented on at all. It should be added that although such a division is not accurate from a dialectological perspective, as Aliūkaitė (2011: 211) notes, in perceptual dialectology studies, “the ‘boundaries of language feeling’ that mark dialect boundaries on a cognitive map rarely correspond to the boundaries of ‘language reality’.”

Some of the maps in this group (and there are not many) show that not all students have any real understanding of how dialects or even regions—the basis on which almost all of them divide Lithuania into four dialect areas—are laid out. Confusion between the adjacent western and southern Aukštaitian areas, or, from an ethnographic perspective, the distinct Suvalkian and Dzūkian areas, is understandable. It is difficult to explain why the southern Aukštaitian dialect, or Dzūkian, is spoken in the northern part of the Samogitian dialect area, that is, its core, while Samogitian is spoken on Lithuania’s eastern edge. Thus, in the awareness of some young Šiauliai and Panevėžys speakers, inaccurate or unclear conceptions have formed not only of the dialect boundaries examined in this article, but also of the boundaries of ethnographic regions.

The students’ comments in the margins of the maps merely supplement the information contained in the maps themselves. Šiauliai students called the following areas Samogitian

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and evaluated (as beautiful or ugly, correct or incorrect) the linguistic areas marked in northwestern Lithuania, whose identification was beyond doubt. In the north and northeast, the zones they marked on these maps were most often evaluated only. Their dialectal affiliation (i.e. Aukštaitian) was specified very rarely. Panevėžys students marked, named, and evaluated areas located within both dialect areas.

It should be added that the comments by Šiauliai gymnasium students on the maps in this group reveal a fairly favorable attitude toward the Samogitian dialect. In most cases, it is neither understood nor considered beautiful, yet it is “peculiarly interesting” (Šiaul_1(2)_M25). For Panevėžys students, the Samogitian dialect is often not only “beautiful and interesting” (Pn_1_M38), “[...] beautiful-sounding, very distinctive [...]” (Pn_1_M41), but also “[...] exceptional” (Pn_1_M05).

It is well known that one of the most important factors determining a dialect’s appeal is its correspondence to the so-called standard language used on television and radio (Aliūkaitė 2011: 211). The attitudes of students who, in their questionnaires, mostly say they know the Šiauliai or Aukštaitian dialect and, less often, the Samogitian dialect, indicate that although the Samogitian dialect does not meet this criterion, it is viewed very favorably by students and enjoys considerable prestige.

The Aukštaitian dialect was evaluated similarly by students in both cities. Unlike Samogitian, it is “[...] a simple, familiar dialect” (Pn_1_V41), “[...] very familiar” (Pn_1_M29), and therefore understandable; however, in some specific linguistic areas—for example, around Biržai and Rokiškis—it is “[...] blunt, coarse” (Pn_1_M18), around Panevėžys “[...] rustic [...]” (Pn_1_M10), and around Anykščiai “[...] strange” (Pn_1_M08).

A study conducted in Lithuanian cities by Dovilė Krupickaitė and Viktorija Baranauskienė showed that residents of the major cities considered the Aukštaitian dialect, rather than the Samogitian, to be the most prestigious and familiar dialect (Krupickaitė, Baranauskienė 2013: 43). It should be added that respondents also singled out the Samogitian dialect, which, it was noted, competes with the Suvalkian dialect.

Maps in which the boundary between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects is indicated (fairly) clearly. The Lithuanian-speaking area was divided into dialects by 28 percent of gymnasium students in Šiauliai and 36 percent in Panevėžys¹⁶.

To examine the relationship between the boundary separating dialects (regions) and the boundary in the students’ awareness, the available maps were compared with those of Lithuanian dialects (see Fig. 7).

¹⁶ To avoid distorting the precise percentage data, maps with unclear markings were excluded. They make up 3 percent of all maps.

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FIG. 7. Example of marking Lithuanian dialects and their boundaries on students’ maps (Pn_1_V58)¹⁷

On many students’ maps (see the example of such marking in Fig. 7), the boundary drawn between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects as far as the Kelmė or Raseiniai areas corresponds to the one indicated by dialectologists. Farther south, the Samogitian dialect area on the maps is often somewhat smaller: it excludes small parts of the areas around Raseiniai and Jurbarkas, which linguists generally consider Samogitian-speaking. In the far south, students very often extend the area of this dialect somewhat by assigning to it the Aukštaitian-speaking Pagėgiai zone.

The recording on maps of linguistic areas marked at the boundary between two dialects or located a little way on either side of it (and thus regarded as dialect-speaking) shows that objective dialect boundaries (drawn by linguists on the basis of linguistic features) differ somewhat from subjective ones (those that exist in the awareness of ordinary language users)¹⁸ (see the table).

¹⁷The approximate boundary between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects is marked on the map with a black dashed line (see LKA I, map no. 1).

¹⁸Studies have established that residents of Lithuania’s major cities know the boundary between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects fairly well (Krupickaitė, Baranauskienė 2013: 40–53).

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TABLE. The eastern boundary of the Samogitian dialect according to students in Šiauliai and Panevėžys¹⁹

Linguistic areas; Ž+A²⁰; Ž+A²; Ž+S?; Ž+?; Ž; Ž?; A; A?; S+?;? (?+?); S; M¹; Šiauliai; Pakruojis; Šilalė; Kelmė; Radviliškis; Raseiniai; Jurbarkas; Tauragė; Pagėgiai; Šilutė; Mažeikiai; Akmenė; Joniškis; Telšiai

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A considerable proportion of Šiauliai schoolchildren (see table) drew the boundary between the two dialects in the north at the junction of the Akmenė and Joniškis areas. Thus, they assigned the Akmenė area or part of it to the Samogitian dialect.

Panevėžys schoolchildren often shifted this boundary farther east, assigning to the Samogitian dialect area not only Akmenė but also the Joniškis and Radviliškis areas—or parts of them—which linguists consider Aukštaitian (see table).

Only Šiauliai schoolchildren somewhat more frequently drew the dialect boundary approximately midway through the Šiauliai region (see Fig. 8).

Only a few Panevėžys schoolchildren separated the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects around the middle of this area. In the maps assigned to the group under discussion, almost all Panevėžys schoolchildren considered the Šiauliai area Samogitian (see Fig. 9).

The dialect affiliation of the Kelmė area seemed quite clear to schoolchildren in both cities. Almost all the young people from Panevėžys and a considerable proportion of those from Šiauliai indicated that Samogitian was spoken there. In maps drawn by several respondents in Šiauliai (as in works on dialectology), unlike those of respondents from Panevėžys, the boundary between the two dialects—Samogitian and Aukštaitian—was drawn through the Kelmė area.

As can be seen from the maps drawn by young people in Šiauliai, the Raseiniai region can be assigned to the Samogitian dialect area only tentatively. Similar results were obtained by systematizing the map data from Panevėžys schoolchildren.

The Jurbarkas area was very often not marked at all by schoolchildren from Šiauliai. Panevėžys high-school students assigned the territory of Jurbarkas Municipality to the Samogitian dialect.

Schoolchildren in both cities found it difficult to identify the dialect affiliation of the Pagėgiai area (which dialectology considers part of the Western Aukštaitian Kaunas subdialect). Most of the young people from Šiauliai could not associate this area with any specific dialect. The rest considered it Samogitian. Almost all Panevėžys schoolchildren, including even those who had distinguished the Samogitians from the Aukštaitians fairly accurately, identified the Pagėgiai area—which is Aukštaitian from a dialectal perspective—as Samogitian.

In near-unanimous agreement, the young people from Šiauliai and Panevėžys assigned the Šilalė area, like Šilutė, to the Samogitian dialect.

¹⁹ In the places highlighted in bold in this table, dialectology marks the boundary between the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects (see LKA I, map no. 1).

²⁰ The table uses the following abbreviations for the dialectal (ethnographic) units identified by the young respondents: Ž – Samogitian dialect, A – Aukštaitian dialect, S – Sudovian dialect, ML – Lithuania Minor. A question mark indicates linguistic areas that schoolchildren marked as dialectal but did not associate with a particular dialect. The abbreviations for the respective cities—Šl and Pn—were chosen to distinguish the responses of respondents from Šiauliai and Panevėžys.

²¹ The number of occurrences is given in parentheses.

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FIG. 8. Dialect affiliation of border areas from the perspective of Šiauliai school students

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FIG. 9. Dialect affiliation of border areas from the perspective of Panevėžys school students

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From what has been said, it becomes clear that in the maps of some young Šiauliai and Panevėžys speakers, perceptions of the geographical boundaries of the Samogitian dialect vary considerably: in some maps, the boundary of the Samogitian area is shifted slightly or somewhat farther east, while in others this area is considerably narrowed to the west.

The young people who took part in the study found it difficult to define the area of the Aukštaitian dialect. As can be seen from the maps and their comments, the school students distinguish only the Aukštaitian-speaking area of northern and northeastern Lithuania (that is, almost the whole of ethnographic Aukštaitija), where, as they note, the Aukštaitian dialect is spoken more often, and the North Aukštaitian and East Aukštaitian dialects much less often (see Fig. 7). The area of the Aukštaitian dialect was defined very similarly in the maps of school students surveyed in a study conducted in other Lithuanian cities.

Very rarely did school students in Šiauliai and Panevėžys, as well as in other cities, indicate that Aukštaitian is also spoken in the southwestern part of Lithuania (Šiaul_2(3)_V08, Šiaul_2(3)_V10). The prevalent designations for the southwestern area of the Lithuanian language are suvalkų tarmė (Šiaul_2(2)_M08), suvalkai (Šiaul_2(3)_M04), suvalkietiška (Pn_1_M01), suvalkiečių (Pn_1_M42). According to Rima Bakšienė (Bakšienė 2015: 8), this shows that “from the perspective of an ordinary user, the Suvalkiečiai are regarded as a separate terminological unit; in the self-awareness of the ordinary user, it is not customary to classify them as Aukštaičiai.”

The Dzūkai, or, in terms of terminology, the Southern Aukštaičiai, are also considered a separate terminological unit; school students defined their area on the maps separately or together with the aforementioned Suvalkiečiai. Young participants in the survey were particularly inclined to confuse these two areas²². Some school students surveyed as part of the project who represented gymnasiums in other cities, for example Biržai, as their maps show, simply wrote that they did not know which dialect was spoken in this area, or did not mark it at all.

The sparse comments by Šiauliai school students found at the edges of the maps (it should be recalled that very few maps could be assigned to this group) do not differ in their views of the dialects from the remarks made by Šiauliai school students in the second group’s maps. For them, the Samogitian dialect is “very beautiful, familiar, difficult to understand, but the real one (incorrect)” (Šiaul_2(3)_M07). The Aukštaitian dialect, especially in the view of Panevėžys gymnasium students, is their native dialect and therefore the most beautiful, closest (“The East Aukštaitian dialect. It is closest to me” (Pn_1_V53)), easiest to understand (“[...] the speech of people from Aukštaitija is the easiest for me to understand” (Pn_1_M80), “Aukštaitian—in my opinion, the easiest dialect to understand” (Pn_1_V22)), and most correct, because it “[…] most closely resembles the standard language” (Pn_1_M52).

²² Žilvytis Šaknys obtained similar results: young-generation informants found it particularly difficult to define the boundaries of the Dzūkija region (Šaknys 2012: 135).

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CONCLUSIONS

The analysis of data collected through a map task among upper-secondary school students in the cities of Šiauliai and Panevėžys led, in many respects, to the same conclusions as studies already conducted according to the principles of perceptual dialectology.

Most young language users marked and named on the map the prototypical areas of the Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects, which raised few doubts. A considerable number of maps indicated that dialect was spoken only in the respondents’ native areas, or in those areas and their immediate surroundings.

Contrary to claims in ethnological studies, students are fairly familiar with the system of Lithuanian dialects—the Aukštaitian and Samogitian dialects: the boundary between them established in dialectology coincides to a considerable extent with the perceptual isoglosses reflected in the maps.

The area of the Aukštaitian dialect formed in the self-awareness of young Šiauliškiai and Panevėžiškiai includes only the Western Aukštaitian Šiauliškiai and part of the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect area, according to dialectological classification. The remaining area of the Lithuanian language, which they do not associate with the Aukštaitian dialect, is designated by the names Suvalkian (or Suvalkų) and Dzūkian, which define ethnographic regions.

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Dialectal Self-awareness of the Young Inhabitants of Šiauliai and Panevėžys: Borders in Mental Maps

SUMMARY

The dialectal images that reveal the dialectal self-awareness of the schoolchildren of two cities – Šiauliai and Panevėžys – are discussed in the article. A questionnaire designed according to the principles of sociolinguistics, dialectology and perceptive dialectology served as a research tool. The data collected according to the first task in the questionnaire – the mental map – were drawn on in this work. Most attention was devoted to the analysis of the subjective maps (existing only in the self-awareness of the ordinary language user), which revealed the Lithuanian dialectal classification.

The analysis of the data of the task of the map collected in the cities of Šiauliai and Panevėžys in most cases led to the same conclusions which had already been drawn when employing the methods of perceptive dialectology.

In the given map most young language users rather precisely marked and named the areas of the prototypical Samogitian and Aukštaitian dialects, which raised no doubts. It was pointed out in the greater part of the maps that the dialects were only spoken in native areas or also in the surrounding environs. The schoolchildren were a little more in favour of the not very regular but beautiful dialect of the Samogitian dialectal area or the dialect of the neighbouring Šiauliai region.

Contrary to some ethnologists’ research, the analysis of the data gathered in border towns demonstrated that the schoolchildren are rather well aware of the border between the Lithuanian dialects – Samogitian and Aukštaitian – drawn in dialectology. Nevertheless, the binary classification of Lithuanian dialects given by dialectologists and the one existing in the self-awareness of the nave language user is different. In the self-awareness of the young responders the language area attributed to the Aukštaitian dialect encompasses one-third of the area of this dialect only. Quite a large area of the rest of the Southern and South-western dialectological Aukštaitian is comprised of the people of Suvalkija and Dzūkija who are considered dialectal units by ordinary language users.

Įteikta 2016 m. sausio 8 d.

LAURA GERŽOTAITĖ

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308, Vilnius, Lietuva

[email protected]

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