Primary Sources as a Means of Intertemporal Communication: Linguistic Aspect

The article examines the role of historical sources as a means of communication connecting the past, the present and the future, and providing historians with the possibility of studying the historical past by obtaining raw information and firsthand evidence of the bygone events. The relevance of this paper is determined by the value of the information contained in the medieval chronicles. Historical sources serve the foundation of the historical research fostering the reconstruction of the events that had occurred more than a thousand years before. As historical sources are diverse, their selection and analysis determine the quality of the historiographical work. A chronicle is one of the most reliable and widely used medieval sources. The objective of the paper is the featuring of rendering the historical events recorded in the Medieval Chronicle, and their presentation in historiographical discourse from the communicative view point. To achieve the objective it is necessary to use a number of methods, including the method of contextual analysis, descriptive-analytical method, systemic-cultural method, classification method, the methods of comparative and etymological analyses. The research material is a historiographical discourse consisting of primary and secondary sources. As a result of the conducted research, the role of language as a universal means of communication was confirmed. Due to language it is possible to reconstruct the events of the historical past connecting the people of the bygone years with those of the present. Neither the chronicler nor the historian can abstract from their milieu or overlook the responsibilities assigned to them. This very fact indicates the discursiveness of both historiography and chronicles, in which "a friend and a foe" approach to the presentation of the events of the historical past is clearly seen and is the basic topic of the chronicler, historian and their recipients communication.