Plebiscyt z 1920 roku w oczach Warmiaków na podstawie tekstów ustnych

This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the picture of a groundbreaking historical event captured in oral accounts from Warmia. To this end, terms from the fi eld of ethnolinguistics, in particular linguistic worldview and point of view, have been applied. The analysis of the texts has revealed a clear opposition marked by lexemes polski (Polish) and niemiecki (German) and their derivatives as well as positive evaluation of what is local (Warmian). At the lexical level, borrowings from German (welować ‘to elect’), dialectal lexis (poszczwać ‘to bait’) and a signifi cant share of collocations referring to the situation of elections (odprawiać wiece) can be distinguished. What plays an important role in the picture of the plebiscite is the language exponents of negative phenomena and emotions, e.g. acts of violence, feeling of fear. The predominant stylistic devices employed are metonyms and metaphors.