Criminal sociolect in the criminal trilogy by Sergiusz Piasecki

The author of the article aims at reconstructing the criminal sociolect of the North-Eastern Borderlands in 1918-1919, based on The Criminal Trilogy by Sergiusz Piasecki. The plot of the novels takes place in Minsk Litewski, which, at that time, was full of thieves from all regions of Poland. In the novels, Piasecki recreated the sociolect of thieves living in the North-Eastern Borderlands, using the authentic criminal lexis. The authenticity of this sociolect is confirmed both by the materials provided by Piasecki himself (preface, footnotes and vocabulary of thieves’ language) and by their comparison with other lexicographic scientific descriptions concerning criminal vocabulary from the first half of the twentieth century