Notre étude prend pour objet la façon dont la jeunesse polonaise comprend aujourd’hui les gentilés européens tels que Polacy (les Polonais), Niemcy (les Allemands) et Francuzi (les Français), ainsi que le gentilé Europejczycy (les Européens) lui-même, plusieurs années après l’adhésion de la Pologne à l’Union européenne, faisant suite à la chute du régime communiste. Ces deux évènements historiques relativement récents sont en effet susceptibles d’avoir affecté la perception du monde des Polonais. En appréhendant la signification des gentilés précités par la vision d’une communauté de locuteurs, les jeunes locuteurs Polonais, cette étude s’inscrit dans le courant linguistique des recherches cognitives. Ces recherches mettent en avant, dans l’étude des structures sémantiques de la langue, le lien fondamental entre langue et pensée et prennent pour objectif de parvenir au sujet parlant (en tant que membre d’une communauté de locuteurs), à sa perception, à sa conceptualisation du monde (liée à son expérience) et à son système de valeurs. Notre étude adhère ainsi plus particulièrement au courant de l’ethnolinguistique de Lublin tel que l’a défini Jerzy Bartmiński et selon lequel nous ne saurions chercher le sens des gentilés Polacy, Niemcy, Francuzi et Europejczycy dans les dictionnaires, puisqu’il se trouve avant tout, pour ainsi dire, dans la tête des locuteurs. / Our study takes as its object the way the Polish youth understands today European ethnonyms such as Polacy (the Polish), Niemcy (the Germans), Francuzi (the French), and also the name Europejczycy (the Europeans) itself, several years after the accession of Poland to the European Union, following the fall of the communistic regime. These two historical events, these advances, could affect the way that Polish people perceive the world. This study situates itself in the mainstream of the cognitive linguistics research, which puts in the foreground the crucial link between language and thinking in the study of the semantic structures of language and aims to reach the speaking subject (as a member of a linguistic community), his perception and his conceptualization of the world (connected to his experience) together with his system of values. Therefore this thesis falls within the mainstream of the ethnolinguistic school of Lublin, the basic assumptions of which were described by Jerzy Bartmiński. According to this, the meaning of words such as Polacy, Niemcy, Francuzi and Europejczycy cannot be found in dictionaries, because their meaning exists primarily in the mind of the speakers.

Cette thèse analyse le surgissement des Tacana, un groupe indien qui s’est formé il y a quelque vingt ans dans le nord de l’Amazonie bolivienne, au moment même où se mettaient en place un ensemble de réformes étatiques visant à construire un modèle de citoyenneté dans le respect de la diversité ethnique. L’apparition des Tacana est un évènement moderne et contemporain ; ses acteurs sont des descendants des gens qui arrivèrent dans cette région à la fin du XIXème siècle, venant de différents départements du pays, et qui fournirent la main-d’œuvre d’un système d’extraction forestière qui exploita d’abord le caoutchouc, et ensuite d’autres ressources de la forêt amazonienne. L’étude a ainsi pour toile de fond les interactions entre les travailleurs forestiers et les industriels qui contrôlent l’économie régionale. Ce phénomène de conversion ethnique est vu sous trois angles. On analyse la façon ! dont les travailleurs se sont approprié l’ethnonyme « Tacana » et l’ont utilisé pour se faire entendre et pouvoir profiter des réformes étatiques. On montre comment ils ont cherché à affirmer et à justifier leur existence en tant groupe spécifique au travers des recensements organisés par les organismes de l’État et par les instances internationales qui travaillent à la défense des droits indigènes. Enfin, la particularité de ce phénomène apparaît dans les actions collectives qu’ils ont entreprises dans le but de devenir propriétaires d’une aire territoriale indigène collective, ce qui était la raison fondamentale de leur choix de « devenir Indiens ». Par-delà le cas des Tacana, il est démontré que les politiques étatiques qui cherchent à gérer les différences ethniques ne sont pas le résultat de demandes sociales mais que, tout au contraire, ces demandes sont la conséquence de l’application de ce type de politiques. / This thesis studies the rise of the Tacana, an indigenous group formed in Bolivian Amazonia two decades ago, when different State reforms aimed at constructing a citizenship model based on respect for ethnic diversity. The emergence of the Tacana is a contemporary phenomenon involving part of the descendants of those groups who arrived in the region during the late 19th Century coming from different parts of the country. These people formed the labor force for a forest extraction system which initially exploited rubber but later extended its activities to other forest resources. Against this background, the situation has been analyzed in this study interms of the interactions between the forest laborers and the business management that controls the local economy. The thesis explores how, in this ethnic conversion process, forest laborers have used the “Tacana” identity to achieve visibility as well as benefit from the ethnic State reforms. The study shows how these laborers sought to justify their differential existence formally through census registrations made by State institutions which were backed up by international institutions involved in the defense of Indigenous Rights. The particularity of this process is also examined from the point of view of collective action undertaken by the new ethnic group to become the legal owners of a collective indigenous land –the primary factor that explains why they chose to become ethnic subjects. Our investigation shows that State policies that seek to manage ethnic differences are not triggered by social demands; rather, this sort of demand is a direct consequence of policy application.

This study has collected and analysed a database of place-names containing potential ethnonymic elements. Competing models of ethnicity are investigated and applied to names about which there is reasonable confidence. A number of motivations for employment of ethnonyms in place-names emerge. Ongoing interaction between ethnicities is marked by reference to domain or borderland, and occasional interaction by reference to resource or transit. More superficial interaction is expressed in names of commemorative, antiquarian or figurative motivation. The implications of the names for our understanding of the history of individual ethnicities are considered. Distribution of Walh-names has been extended north into Scotland; but reference may be to Romance-speaking feudal incomers, not the British. Briton-names are confirmed in Cumberland and are found on and beyond the fringes of the polity of Strathclyde. Dumbarton, however, is an antiquarian coining. Distribution of Cumbrian-names suggests that the south side of the Solway Firth was not securely under Cumbrian influence; but also that the ethnicity, expanding in the tenth century, was found from the Ayrshire coast to East Lothian, with the Saxon culture under pressure in the Southern Uplands. An ethnonym borrowed from British in the name Cumberland and the Lothian outlier of Cummercolstoun had either entered northern English dialect or was being employed by the Cumbrians themselves to coin these names in Old English. If the latter, such self-referential pronouncement in a language contact situation was from a position of status, in contrast to the ethnicism of the Gaels. Growing Gaelic self-awareness is manifested in early-modern domain demarcation and self-referential naming of routes across the cultural boundary. But by the nineteenth century cultural change came from within, with the impact felt most acutely in west-mainland and Hebridean Argyll, according to the toponymic evidence. Earlier interfaces between Gaelic and Scots are indicated on the east of the Firth of Clyde by the early fourteenth century, under the Sidlaws and in Buchan by the fifteenth, in Caithness and in Perthshire by the sixteenth. Earlier, Norse-speakers may have referred to Gaels in the hills of Kintyre. The border between Scotland and England was toponymically marked, but not until the modern era. In Carrick, Argyll and north and west of the Great Glen, Albanians were to be contrasted, not necessarily linguistically, from neighbouring Gaelic-speakers; Alba is probably to be equated with the ancient territory of Scotia. Early Scot-names, recorded from the twelfth century, similarly reflect expanding Scotian influence in Cumberland and Lothian. However, late instances refer to Gaelic-speakers. Most Eireannach-names refer to wedder goats rather than the ethnonym, but residual Gaelic-speakers in east Dumfriesshire are indicated by Erisch­-names at the end of the fifteenth century or later. Others west into Galloway suggest an earlier Irish immigration, probably as a consequence of normanisation and of engagement in Irish Sea politics. Other immigrants include French estate administrators, Flemish wool producers and English feudal subjects. The latter have long been discussed, but the relationship of the north-eastern Ingliston-names to mottes is rejected, and that of the south-western Ingleston-names is rather to former motte-hills with degraded fortifications. Most Dane-names are also antiquarian, attracted less by folk memory than by modern folklore. The Goill could also be summoned out of the past to explain defensive remains in particular. Antiquarianism in the eighteenth century onwards similarly ascribed many remains to the Picts and the Cruithnians, though in Shetland a long-standing supernatural association with the Picts may have been maintained. Ethnicities were invoked to personify past cultures, but ethnonyms also commemorate actual events, typified by Sasannach-names. These tend to recall dramatic, generally fatal, incidents, usually involving soldiers or sailors. Any figures of secular authority or hostile activity from outwith the community came to be considered Goill, but also agents of ecclesiastical authority or economic activity and passing travellers by land or sea. The label Goill, ostensibly providing 178 of the 652 probable ethnonymic database entries, is in most names no indication of ethnicity, culture or language. It had a medieval geographical reference, however, to Hebrideans, and did develop renewed, early-modern specificity in response to a vague concept of Scottish society outwith the Gaelic cultural domain. The study concludes by considering the forms of interaction between ethnicities and looking at the names as a set. It proposes classification of those recalled in the names as overlord, interloper or native.