Modi of time in dialect discourse texts

The paper proves that the triad of time modes “past - present - future” receives a specific conceptualization in dialect discourse texts that are not marked by intellectual elaboration and a personal source. Analysis of the key concepts with the name time is based on consistently repeated motifs (topics) of discourse and shows that the growth of the concepts’ sense-forming potency is of opposite direction to the “arrow of time” and depends on the degree of time alienation / appropriation. The modus of the future does not have a separate concept in the traditional culture (names coming and future are alien to the empirical dialect language, the semiotic load of oppositions “today / tomorrow” and “yesterday / tomorrow” is hardly developed, the concept brighter future is irrelevant). The modus of the present is not quite self-sufficient, since most texts describe the present only in comparison with the past (the modus of the present is about defectiveness of its manifestations and meanings rather than about the fullness of the living world). The mode of the past is represented by two complex interacting and complementary mental formations (antiquity and past). The name past stands for what precedes the point “now”, while antiquity requires a gap that would separate and distance its sense-forming potential from the profane impact of the “eternal present”. Thus, antiquity is transcendent; it is not included in the limits of the possible human experience, whereas the past is appropriated by everyone and measured primarily by one’s own life (or life of the members of the “we-group”). Yet the ontological inability of the concept to complete expression in a single act of cognition and communication leads to the fact that even at the discursive level every time only a “version”, an “option” of the conceptual content is expressed. In other words, not a single researchergenerated construct of this class can become a standard in relation to its infinite specific implementations.

Keywords

Authors

References