The Role Of Temporal Markers In The Construction Of Narratives In John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes Of Wrath” And In Anar Rzayev’s “The Sixth Floor Of The Five Storey Building”

Abstract

This study examines the use of temporal markers in building narrative discourse structure in two stylistically and culturally different literary works: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Anar Rzayev's The Sixth Floor of the Five Storey Building. Temporal markers, linguistic means used to convey time relations like tense, aspect, adverbs, conjunctions, and discourse markers that are crucial to narrative structure, coherence, and the reader's guidance through temporal progression. It is comparative, qualitative, and descriptive research, and its theoretical foundations are narratology, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics; and Reichenbach's, Fleischman's, and Smith's work most appropriately fits with it. It identifies grammatical time markers and universal time markers in the two texts and categorizes them according to their functional classes and their distribution and narrative function. Steinbeck's temporal signposting is solidly rooted in the linear, chronological progression of action on the basis of the socio-political and historical circumstances of the Joads in the Depression. His language is extrinsically operating, and temporal progression is apt to be signaled by change of tense, adverbials, and paragraphing. Rzayev's writing, meanwhile, is more reflective and denser psychologically in its temporal structuring, one governed by its relentless back-and-forth movement between past and present, with the inner monologue of the protagonist, mood, and fragmented memory. Temporal coherence is achieved here through repetition, ellipses, and culturally contextual temporal markers.The research shows that temporal markers are not grammatical or syntactic tools but natural elements in making meaning that structure narrative logic, affective tone, and readers' experience. Comparing Western and Azerbaijani literary tradition writings, the thesis demonstrates universal and culture-specific temporal organization methods. The research contributes to the general knowledge about time in narrative and offers insight into how the use of language prefigures cognitive and cultural attitudes toward narration.