Preservation and transmission of memory in regional memoir-autobiographical practices: A descriptive model

The aim of the article is to present a model for the linguistic description of memoir-autobiographical practices as a means of preserving and transmitting memory and its implementation in the oral communication of Siberian residents. The material for developing the model consists of more than 1000 oral autobiographical narratives and recollections by rural inhabitants of Siberia, recorded by Tomsk State University (TSU) dialectologists from 1946 to 2025 in the Middle Ob River region and housed in the Tomsk Dialect Corpus; memoirs of residents from the village of Narym, Tomsk Oblast, stored in the Narym Museum of Political Exile; and written autobiographies of rural residents. The research is conducted within the framework of a cognitive-discursive approach, as autobiographies and memoirs are considered discursive practices. The article employs corpus methods, discourse analysis, and modeling. A research model for analyzing memoir-autobiographical practices as a way of preserving and transmitting memory is proposed. It includes the following parameters: purpose, communication participants, spatiotemporal characteristics of text production, thematic organization, narrative specifics, a set of communicative strategies and tactics, conceptual frameworks, and means of linguistic representation. The application of the model is examined using texts that reflect Joseph Stalin's exile in the village of Narym. These include texts from the Tomsk Dialect Corpus and transcripts of three conversations conducted with members of the Alexeev family in July 1938, in whose house Stalin lived during his exile. Testing the model demonstrated its ability to capture common and distinctive features of memory representation in different types of memoir-autobiographical practices. The potential of various memoir-autobiographical practices to preserve and transmit memory depending on time, place, purpose, and communication participants is shown. For example, the recollections of the Alexeev family members were obtained through a single-topic-focused interview. The interviewers' goal was to obtain detailed information related to a specific person. The interviewees' goal was to recall as thoroughly as possible the fact of Stalin's stay in their house and in the village of Narym. The oral autobiographical stories and recollections recorded during dialectological expeditions were elicited at the request of collectors, whose aim was to "get the interlocutors talking," to obtain coherent narratives about their past lives, and to record dialect vocabulary. The informants' goal in this situation was to share memories, to tell about themselves. Means of representing memory in regional memoir-autobiographical practices have been identified. These include: onomastic vocabulary, vocabulary verbalizing the theme of exile and perception, vocabulary with spatial and temporal semantics, verbs in the past and historical present tense, units objectifying mnemonic processes, and others. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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