Chrononyms in academic and popular history

This chapter pivots around the notion of chrononyms, defined as terms that specify a period or segment of time. Chrononyms are examined in what can be considered their privileged milieu, i.e. historical discourse. In particular, chrononyms are herein conceived as being more than simple temporal designators: they can be considered as complex markers establishing specific chronotopes, evoking different cultural contexts and characterizing the different types of discourse under examination. The analysis is based on two corpora of scientific and popular articles on history and it aims at examining the role and the structure of chrononyms from both a phraseological and textual point of view. Convergences and divergences in their formation and in their identifying and classifying functions seem to characterize these two discourses, both centred on time and on its representation, history.