MODERN ENGLISH FEMALE FICTIONAL DISCOURSE THROUGH THE PRISM OF TIME REFERENCE

Time, being a universal phenomenon, which is an integral
component of such a concept as chronotopos, goes through
different types of categorization both in separate language
systems and in the discourse of various authors. The reason of it,
apparently, lies not only in the way representing the temporal
duration predetermined by a certain linguistic culture in terms of
past-present-future and the system of means for this time
paradigm actualization, but also in the creative potential of each
sender of the text striving within the framework of generally
accepted linguistic means of various levels to represent “time”,
either by preserving the threefold nature of the time paradigm, or
reducing its composition to a two-component one – present-past
or present-future. This phenomenon can be traced through the
example of the fictional discourse of contemporary British
authors – S. Kinsella and C. Ahern.
The relevance of this study is to establish a range of lexical
means that serve for building up a temporal hierarchy and
temporal sequence in modern English fictional discourse in the
aspect of the pragmatic intentions of female authors and the
stylistic identity of the discourse they create. The pragmatic
aspect allows us to bring the study to the intertextual level, as,
taken alongside with the whole variety of allusions and plot lines,
it contributes to establishing a significant unity of the pragmatic
intentions of the female authors when the time is actualized in the
discourse. In addition, such an approach helps to identify the
emotional and expressive background that is so intensely
expressed by the fictional characters, thus indicating a significant
subjective involvement of the text senders (both authors and
characters) in the interpretation of the time hierarchy and
temporal sequence. Such an interpretation of time makes it
possible to reveal the peculiarities of modern English female
fictional discourse, in which, at the semantic level, there is a
transformation of the three-member temporal paradigm to the size
of the two-member one, which emphasizes the present and the
future.
Existing in the objective reality, time finds manifestations in
language preserving all the diversity that is peculiar to it. Time
transforming itself subjectively in the individual consciousness
being a linguistic projection of the common and scientific
knowledge of people about this phenomenon. Modern approaches
to the interpretation of time vary between functional grammatical
and functional semantic (G.A. Zolotova, A.D. Shmelev, A.V.
Bondarko, M.V. Vsevolodova), cognitive (E.V. Rakhilina, S.A.
Chugunova, A.V. Kravchenko), ethno-, psycholinguistic, and
linguistic-culturological (V.V. Krasnykh, D.I. Lalaeva, N.I.
Tolstoy, S.M. Tolstaya) and, finally, between semiotic (E.A.
Nielsen, V.V. Ivanov, V.N. Toporov) and logical-semantic (V.G.
Gak, N.D. Arutyunova, E.V. Paducheva).
In different types of language thinking, time is modeled
differently, but it is always modeled in one way or another. At the
same time, the semiotic time, the time of the text, the time of
culture is opposite to the time of physical reality: it is capable of
violating the basic characteristics of physical time – its anisotropy
and leads to the discursive transformation of the postulates of
H. Reichenbach about the irreversibility of physical time. Time in
the fictional discourse of women authors acquires new properties,
being capable of turning the vector of development in the
opposite direction, transforming and shifting the time coordinates
of development. Such properties of time as linearity,
unidirectional flow (the temporal vector is directed from the past
through the present to the future), anisotropy (irreversibility and
irrevocability) receive a new and sometimes unexpectedly bold
interpretation in the works of S. Kinsella and C. Ahern. Our
analysis showed that the characters’ perception of time duration
is most often concentrated on shorter intervals, such as minute
and day, the time for them transforms itself into short spells filled
with intensive psycho-emotional and physical activity. The
characters focus on the future as a consequence of the present,
while the past is objectified extremely rarely at the moments of
reflection of theirs and, if necessary, to construct a retrospective
reference to the events of the past as the reasons of the actions of
the characters in the present. Such a “background” reconstruction
of past events allows the female authors to create an original
temporal sequence and hierarchy, as well as to offer an
unconventional, but no less interesting approach to creating a
two-term temporal paradigm, where the “present” and its
consequence is “the future” are important.

Keywords: fictional discourse, individual creative style, a twomember time paradigm, chronotopos