Stereotypical features of the Jewish in the worldwiew of the Lithuanian Samogitian: lexicographic data

Before the Second World War, urban Jewish communities in the Lithuanian ethnographic region of Samogitia were quite large, thus Samogitians and Jews used to maintain rather close contacts. The paper focuses on Samogitians’ view on Jews from an ethnolinguistic perspective, based on lexicographic material. The analysis of speech samples that express this opinion is based on a structural approach to meaning combined with a cognitive one, following from word meaning to sentence meaning. A stereotypical “image” of the Jew is believed to consist of a specific set of certain common characteristics and traits, which is further elaborated by an analysis of linguistic expression. The analysis of stereotypical features is related to the expression of the axiological system. The research revealed that, in the socio-cultural context, the scale of evaluation of the Jewish people included positive, neutral, and negative evaluations, with the prevalence of stereotypes of Jews as of neighbours, people of other religion, foreigners.