Іноземна філологія (Jan 2024)

TEMPORAL WORLD-SWITCHES IN THREE TEXTS OF DIFFERENT GENRES

  • Olga Kulchytska,
  • Anna Erlikhman,
  • Andrii Tron

DOI
https://doi.org/10.30970/fpl.2023.136.4196
Journal volume & issue
no. 136
pp. 18 – 28

Abstract

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Application of the principles of Text World Theory to texts of diff erent genres gives us a clearer idea of the diversity of roles performed by the same discourse technique. In this study, we look into the technique of changing temporal parameters of the basic text-world which can involve the appearance of new entities and the relocation of setting in discourse. The analysis shows that temporal world-switches in three texts of diff erent genres – an excerpt from a novel, a free verse poem, and an archival project review – transfer a reader mostly to the past. Yet in each text, temporal world-switches are put to a diff erent purpose. In the excerpt from a complex psychological detective novel they are aimed at foregrounding the role and place of a particular enactor in the network of motives and events; in the free verse poem they serve to convey the theme; in the review of archival papers, temporal world-switches bind together the facts of the past and their contemporary interpretation. The results of the current study suggest that temporal world-switches are polyfunctional, their role depending largely on the genre of writing.

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