Abstract
Humans from the early times have used signs to facilitate the communication in the early societies. Semiotics is an approach wherein howness is dominant; it is the investigation of how meaning is created and communicated through systems of signs. In the dramatic texts meanings are conveyed by two different forms of language, stage direction and dialogue. Stage direction and dialogue are complementary and interdependent signifying systems. Stage directions are integral to the structure of dramatic texts and have important functions in their semantic construction. Tennessee Williams is one of the dramatists who use notes or stage directions in his plays. Through such stage devices as lighting, music and sound effects, colors, objects as symbols, transparent walls, the fluctuation of time, etc., he is after the representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material form. This study aims at analysis and examination of Williams’ Camino Real’s stage props and devices as signs and their relationships in the play with regard to semiotics as the theoretical framework and approach
Highlights
The concept of sign is not new since humans from the early times have used signs to facilitate the communication in the early societies
This study aims at analysis and examination of Williams’ Camino Real’s stage props and devices as signs and their relationships in the play with regard to semiotics as the theoretical framework and approach
Signs are the windows to the world of reality and where we live and this window makes reality perceivable for us; it is what Chandler (1994) says about them, “We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized” (Introduction section, para. 20); “the study of signs is the study of the construction and the maintenance of reality”
Summary
Signs are the windows to the world of reality and where we live and this window makes reality perceivable for us; it is what Chandler (1994) says about them, “We learn from semiotics that we live in a world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organized” (Introduction section, para. 20); “the study of signs is the study of the construction and the maintenance of reality” (para. 20). As a semiotics theorist, has divided signs into three categories of icon, index and symbol Describing these three types, Scholes (1982) says, “Any given sign is iconic to the extent that it signifies by virtue of some resemblance or similitude between the sign and what it stands for. Chandler (1994) points to this flexibility in Peirce's division, “It is easy to slip into referring to Peirce’s three forms as 'types of signs,' but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive: a sign can be an icon, a symbol and an index, or any combination” Keir Elam (2002) as a theatre semiotician hints to the historical process of semiotics from twentieth century on, “... [there are] two periods of intense and wide-based activity: the thirties and forties (with the work of the Czech formalists) and the past two decades (especially in France, Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States).” Semiotics has penetrated into literature, too, “the fortunes of the semiotic enterprise in recent years have been especially high in the field of literary studies, above all with regard to poetry and the narrative.” Yet as Elam mentions “theatre and drama; have received considerably less attention, despite the peculiar richness of theatrical communication as a potential area of semiotic investigation” (p. 2)
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