Ježíšek (‘Baby Jesus’?) as a conceptual construct and the key word of the Czech culture

Abstract

The study of the relationship between language and culture has recently found an interesting source of inspiration in the theoretical-methodological basis of cognitive linguistics and ethnolinguistics. The paper draws on this resource, especially on the findings of J. Bartmiński’s Ethnolinguistic School of Lublin and the theory of culturally key words by Anna Wierzbicka, and following the previous ethnolinguistic research of Czech Christmas, it focuses on the image of the Christmas giver Ježíšek in contemporary Czech (private and public) discourse. This image has been reconstructed based on the analysis of language data and culturally significant texts dealing with the Ježíšek topic, and also based on a survey conducted among Czechs on social networks. The objective of the analysis is to contribute to the formulation of the so-called cognitive definition connected to the Ježíšek conceptualization, and to identify some of its aspects.