Настоящее и будущее в русском лингвокультурном пространстве

Abstract

Referring to materials from the National Corpus of the Russian language, the author studies the idea of the present and future characteristic of modern Russian linguoculture. The author focuses her attention on contexts with the substantives настоящее (the present) and будущее (the future).The article aims to determine the main idea of these modes of time, their interconnection, as well as reveal metaphors used to describe the present and the future and establish the means of their perception. The analysis of contexts containing the word настоящее (the present) shows that they generally contain a comparison of this mode with others. Only 24 percent of all instances have this word used alone, while in the majority of cases it is compared to the past and conditioned by it. It is the most dependent time. Contrary to this, the future is represented as self-sufficient (accounting for 85 percent of independent uses). However, the future is quite often regarded ironically. The analyzed modes are described by means of the following types of metaphors: visual, auditory, motor, structural, and artifact (and its realization — the possessive metaphor). They are all typical of the objectification of the future. When it comes to the representation of the present, the visual and possessive metaphors are not used and the others have a number of peculiarities. It is not the methods of the perception of the future that matter when it comes to its cognition but reflection and its evaluation. The ways to cognize the future are planning, prediction, foresight, and premonition, most often conveyed through the verb увидеть (to see). Though evolving, the phenomenon of time continues to be relevant for our society.