The Signifier Er Onej In The Prekmurje and Porab Dialects

The word onej from the Prekmurje and Porab dialects belongs to a special type of signifiers, which otherwise have no concrete meaning, but denote the opposite of the very absence of meaning. The onej is similar to the Slovenian oné, but it is still alive in use. If we observe its use from the point of view of the causes of the speaker's embarrassment, in which he uses this signifier, we find that these causes sometimes lie in the speaker himself, secondly in social prohibitions, and thirdly in nature or in that what is not yet symbolized, and so is unknown. The decline in use is probably due to the breaking of social taboos on the one hand and the development of science on the other, as science in modern society is a fundamental system of interpretation. The use of the Prekmurje-Porabian onej in some speech situations thus indicates the very archaic face of this signifier.