A cognitive linguistic investigation of time differentiation in a narrative poetic text

Abstract

This article utilises the principles of Cognitive Rhetoric, as set out in previous articles (Spruyt, 2000; 2001), to show that the analytical framework for the description of time differentiation in actual language usage can also be applied to a fictional narrative text, by analysing DJ Opperman's poem Dennebol. Firstly, it is shown that mental spaces are used to construct meaning by formulating a central inference, or theme, in a story. As the theme deals with eternal, timeless truths the human consciousness construes the theme in the present tense. Secondly, it is shown that the story also structures the chronological course of the events in the form of time frames, where projections are made from the present tense to other time frames. Within these time frames the chronological course of a series of causally related events are construed as event frames.