Dialect awareness among junior high school students in rural areas

The article discusses dialect awareness in junior high school students in Polish uplands, based on a questionnaire research taken among rural schools. As demonstrated by its findings, young students - without any exception - associate the notion of dialect with the sphere of language, and they realise this code’s limited territorial and societal extent. Quite frequently, they mistake the notion of dialect for the speech of Podhale and Silesia inhabitants and for the colloquial language. A third of the respondents (34%) declare using the dialect but only in unofficial settings - mostly at home and in neighbourhood, and less frequently as a jocular expression. Manifestations of local dialect are seen by students primarily in such linguistic units which differ from the standard Polish language in terms of phonetic. When "citing" dialect, young people usually draw on realities of the traditional village.