The Interaction Pattern of Actantial, Pathemic, and Tensive Systems in Meaning Construction: A Comparative Study of Two Bakhtiari and Isfahani Folktales within the Framework of Greimasian Discursive Semiotics

Iranian folktales, through their distinctive narrative structures and value systems, provide a productive framework for examining the process of meaning-making within the perspective of Greimasian semiotics of discourse. This study investigates the interaction of the actantial, pathemic, and tensive systems in the construction of meaning by analyzing two Iranian folktales: Hasani and Fatouli (from Isfahan) and Haft Dokhtarun (from the Bakhtiari tradition), based on Greimas’s semiotic model. The research adopts a descriptive-analytical approach and is grounded in library-based data. The findings indicate that both narratives follow a common structural pattern, beginning with an initial state of lack, followed by the quest for a valued object, confrontation with a series of trials, and the restoration of equilibrium. Within this process, the actantial system organizes the narrative program and directs the subject toward the valued object; the pathemic system shapes perceptual and emotional experiences, thereby providing the motivation and competence for action; and the tensive system accelerates narrative transformation and semantic change through moments of crisis and rupture. Hasani and Fatouli primarily foregrounds the actantial system through the realization of justice and the restoration of rightful ownership, whereas Haft Dokhtarun places greater emphasis on the tensive system by highlighting survival, cooperation, and overcoming crisis. Accordingly, meaning in these narratives emerges not from the independent operation of each discursive system but from the dynamic interaction of the actantial, pathemic, and tensive systems—an interaction that plays a decisive role in the construction of cultural values and the process of signification.