In the article entitled “Contemporary Changes in Slavic Languages”, Stanisław Gajda writes that “our modern world’s feature is the permanence of changes and their increasing depth, which we are trying to describe using terms such as the great transformation, the third wave, postmodern breakthrough, etc.” (Gajda 1998: 64–85). In Poland, as well as in other Slavic countries, these changes have intensified greatly over the last twenty-five years as the result of a profound financial, economic, social and cultural transformation. On 1 May 2004, Poland became one of the member states of the European Union, and one of the results of this was that the Polish language began to be strongly influenced by Western cultural factors, including consumerism, the significance of the media, americanisation (within the scope of language and culture) and technology in modern day life (Urniaź 2004: 431–432).

Socioeconomic changes in Poland in the second half of the 20th century

In the city

The first serious wave of changes to Polish language and culture affected the whole of society and took place after World War II. This wave was related to the political, socioeconomic and ethnocultural transformation of both the urban and rural areas of language and culture.

Today, most of the inhabitants of Poland live in cities. In 2013, 23.4 million people did so, which constituted 60.6% of the country’s population (MRS 2013: 120). By comparison, only 25% of the population lived in cities in 1921 (Dyoniziak et al. 1994: 100). Throughout the whole post-war period, as a result of social and economic changes, the number of people living in cities constantly increased, a factor corroborated by the corresponding increase in the number of large cities. For example, in 1946, only 11 Polish cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, while in 2013 there were as many as 39 (Dyoniziak et al. 1994: 110; MRS 2013: 84).

The increasing number of city inhabitants was the result of further waves of migration. Directly after the war, this migration was mainly related to easy access to schools, as well as the development of industry which led to a rise in the availability of jobs in urban areas.