THE NAMING OF LOCI AND CHARACTERS IN NARRATIVES ABOUT FORCED EVICTION FROM THE INUNDATION ZONE

The article analyses the names of loci and characters in the memoirs about forced relocation from flood zones due to the construction of hydroelectricity. This is a continuation of the study of resettlement vocabulary, that is nominative constructions of different types (tokens, phrases, idioms, phraseologies, descriptive frames), which function in the migrants’ memories and represent the verbal image of forced resettlement. The nomination in the memoirs reveals the special vision of the experienced event by its participants, classifies their gained experience. In the studied autobiographical narratives, the most common location nominations are the names of the spatial objects in the flooded places and in the new place. In this semantic category of nomination, as well as in other analysed categories, the following regularity operates: the more nominative density of this or that territory indicates the more mastered, native locus. In the studied texts the different density of the spatial nomination of these two contextually oppositional loci is striking. Thus, a telling feature is the presence of numerous microtoponyms in stories about the lost territory and the almost complete absence of such nominations in the description of the new settlement. Descriptions of the resettlement place are concise, stingy, with a tangible contrast in favour of the lost place. In the memories of people who have personally gone through all the stages of resettlement, the arrangement of characters often occurs through the opposition ‟we — the perpetrators of resettlement” (in memories about preparation and resettlement) and through the opposition ‟we — neighbours” (in memories about adaptation to a new place). A typical place of memories is the presentation of the resettled village community as friendly and cohesive. Autonomy of direct participants in forced evictions is most often formed from the verb creative basis переселяти (resettlement): переселенці, переселенські люди, переселені (migrants, displaced people, displaced persons). At the opposite pole of the contextual semantic opposition ῾immigrants — performers of resettlement’ are numerous characters who are direct performers. The figures of people are folklorized — most often old men and women, who had been refusing to move until the last minute. Today, these images have been symbolizing the people’s resistance to the forced migration.