Stereotyp (od)tworzony. Język rosyjski, Rosjanie i Rosja w "Świecie według Kiepskich"

Because of the centuries-old neighbourhood and the significant role played in our part of the world, Russia is still present in Polish mass culture. The entertainment character of many TV programmes quite often bears fruits with a laidback attitude towards the picture of Russia and Russians – the producers of popular TV series are not obliged to create their pictures on the basis of facts, but if they completely ignored them, their products would not be associated with Russia. The facts are usually replaced with stereotypes, which form the basis for the characters and reality representing Russians, Russia and Russianness (and also the East and Sovietness). The TV series The World According to the Kiepskis because of its social character, history (the second longest TV series in Poland, broadcasted since 1999) and popularity (high average viewership approx. 3 million watchers) is an ideal material for our study. We have analysed the episodes with Russian motives: Russian or post-Soviet characters, clues or utterances in Russian (or pretending to be Russian). The main aim of the given research was to answer the question, if the popular culture still reproduces the stereotypes, e.g. the popular picture of the Russian language, which differs from Polish with adjective endings and vowel reductions, or – on the contrary – Poles learn from the TV series about the sound and lexis of Russian, which continuously becomes more exotic for them.