Precedent texts are currently the object of close attention of many linguists (D.B. Gudkov, I.V. Zakharenko, V.V. Krasnykh, V.G. Kostomarov, N.D. Burvikova, L.P. Dyachenko, Ye.V. Ivantsova), because they bear cultural, historical, ethnic knowledge about the world. It is interesting to consider precedent texts in the discourse of a person as a consciously shaped tendency, which reflects the course of development of human thought. The purpose of this article is to reveal the features of precedent texts in the discourse of an ordinary person, James Kondratyevich Damme (hereinafter J.K.), the German folk informal language bearer, who was born in 1920 in the village of Schilling, Saratov region and now lives in Tomsk region. The task of the article is to describe the scope, sources of precedent texts in the discourse of J.K., to analyse the function of precedent texts in the discourse of J.K., and to compare the results with the data described in the work of Ye.V. Ivantsova, who analyses the characteristics of precedent texts in the speech of V.P. Vershinina (hereinafter V.P.), an old-time dialect representative from village Vershinino, Tomsk region. The sources of precedent texts in the discourse of J.K. have been mixed, they have elements of different times and cultures, which shows the speaker's outlook, experience, ideological preferences, and attitudes. The following sources can be traced in the discourse of a language personality: history, economics, agriculture, religion, folklore. Among the most important functions of precedent texts, which are used by J.K., we can distinguish nominative, persuasive and password functions. The common features characteristic for the precedent texts functioning in the Russian language of V.P. and the German language of J.K. are: 1) use of proverbs; 2) use of precedent texts-statements of strangers. The distinct features of precedent units of V.P. and J.K. are: 1) use of precedent texts used in the media (J.K.); 2) use of proverbs and sayings aimed at describing qualities of a person (V.P.); 3) lack of precedent texts that source from works of fiction (V.P.); 4) diversity of sources for presenting precedent units (J.K.); 5) large functional load of precedent texts in German discourse (J.K.). Thus, we can conclude that precedent texts are an important part of the discourse of a language personality.

Рассматриваются особенности использования прецедентных текстов в дискурсе рядовой личности. Определяются функции и сферы-источники прецедентных текстов, присущих немецкой народно-разговорной речи индивида. Дается обобщение признаков прецедентных текстов в текстовом корпусе миноритарной разновидности немецкого языка.