Abstract
Semiotics principally investigates and explores the production and function of signs and sign systems as well as the methods of their signification. It is mainly concerned with how a sign signifies and what precedes it at deeper level to result in the manifestation of its meaning. For this purpose, it offers a set of unified principles that underlie the construction, signification and communication of any sign system. The literary text as a sign system serves as an artfully constructed fictional discourse that can be signified as the same way of the signification of other sign systems. This article explains the effects of Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of signs on the development of a clear methodological principle for the narrative studies, particularly for the signification of literary discourse. So it tries to give a new direction to the signification of literary discourse on the basis of the Peirce's theory of signs and cognitive theories. It mainly provides a semiotic method for the signification of literary discourse.
Highlights
During the last two decades, the literary semioticians have made significant efforts to present an unambiguous and comprehensive approach to explain and account for the process of signification involved in different kinds of literary discourse
They have tried to offer frameworks which show an increasing tendency towards an integration of the earlier structuralist paradigms, the contemporary postulates of cognitive sciences and the Peircian semiotic formulations. The application of these fields for the study of literary texts brings about the development of a new phase of literary semiotics that is different from the literary semiotics of the 1950s that mostly had a structural orientation toward the study of narrative
The semiotic analysis of a literary text deals with the way in which meaning is produced by the syntactical structure of interdependent textual signs that are organized under the syntagmatic and paradigmatic forces of the discourse or discursive conventions. It implies that the process of literary signification constitutes three factors: Syntactical structure, semantic constituents and pragmatic aspects of the text
Summary
During the last two decades, the literary semioticians have made significant efforts to present an unambiguous and comprehensive approach to explain and account for the process of signification involved in different kinds of literary discourse They have tried to offer frameworks which show an increasing tendency towards an integration of the earlier structuralist paradigms, the contemporary postulates of cognitive sciences and the Peircian semiotic formulations. The application of these fields for the study of literary texts brings about the development of a new phase of literary semiotics that is different from the literary semiotics of the 1950s that mostly had a structural orientation toward the study of narrative. The literary text should be studied as a culturally contextualized discourse that interacts with other public discourses of society
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