Names of time: Epithets of decades in the Russian National Corpus as a projection of cultural memory

Abstract

In this paper we consider constructions that involve the name of a decade — the twenties, the thirties, the forties etc. — and an adjective in attributive function. The basic assumption is that these constructions refect the mnemonic pattern of each decade in Soviet and Post-Soviet history, and, therefore, that analysis of these constructions provides a way to reconstruct these patterns. The data for this research was obtained from the Russian National Corpus. Six semantic adjectival classes have been designated, each of which sets its own projection of the mnemonic pattern of the decade in the language. Comparison of the collocations of different adjectives and decade names allows us to determine which signifcant 20th century time periods exist in cultural memory and to identify the associative traits connected with these decades. As a result, our research shows the differences in perception of the various decades and allows us to reconstruct the “memory landscape” of Soviet and Post-Soviet history.