Temporal World-Switches in Three Texts of Different Genres

Abstract

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.