An investigation into Social Function of Semantics and Syntax of Narrative in Ace Heart according to Pierre Zima's approach

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
F. karimian 1
S. deldadeh 2
1 lecturer at french departement at Shahid Beheshti University
2 PhD student at french departement at Shahid Beheshti University
10.29252/LRR.14.4.6
Abstract
During the second half of the 20th century, looking to the language as the basic raw material of the literature, leads to overlapping some of the achievements of Discourse Analysis and Sociocriticism. In fact, getting an internal approach to the literary text in order to degage its sociality, and focusing on the discourse in the context of social involved situation, these are the common bases of the two analytic methods. Therefore, Pierre V. Zima introduces his approach as the “sociology of the text” and believes that the social questions could appear through the languages, sociolects and discourses, as well as the lexicon, semantics and syntax could have a social function. In the present article, we aim to analyze the social function of the semantics and the syntax inside the novel Ace Heart by Moniru Ravanipur to find out the interdiscursive relation between the text and the surrounding society.



From the second half of the 20th century, attention to the social nature of language as the building material of literature led to the overlapping of some of the achievements in the field of discourse analysis and sociological criticism. Linguistics experts paid attention to the discourse and context and the situation of speaking together with society and social institutions. In this regard, sociological criticism as an internal approach to the literary text to investigate and analyze the social mechanism of the word, meaning, and narrative syntax approached the critical analysis of discourse and social semiotics more than other methods. Pierre Zima, one of the most famous figures of sociological criticism, believes that all kinds of literary, theoretical, ideological, and some other texts have a discourse-oriented structure due to their linguistic nature. In his criticism method, which is called the "sociology" of the text, he has used some semiotic concepts that have sociological dimensions. Zima considers society to be a set of collective dialects and corresponding discourses that engage in conflict over social issues and their collective interests. Pierre Zima put forward two hypotheses: First, linguistic units (words, meaning, and syntax) can lead to social, political, and ideological differences due to their social nature. Second, the literary discourse can react to the social and historical issues and problems of its time at its linguistic levels (words, meaning, and syntax). These two propositions are presented as the main hypotheses of the current research. Our main goal in analyzing the literary discourse of the novel Del Foulad written by Monirou Ravanipour is to answer the question of how the meaning and narrative syntax find a social mechanism in this work and how the literary discourse of this novel reacts to the social situation at the time of the creation of the work? In this research, relying on Zima's point of view, first, the high-frequency words of the novel text have been collected. At the level of meaning, these words can carry positive and negative connotations according to the social situation of their time. In the next step, since the narrator and the characters of the story adopt a special discourse in the face of the surrounding reality to promote their desired meaning, these discourses, which themselves create different or opposite semantic groupings, are analyzed. And in the last stage, these semantic categories will decide the syntactic arrangement and action pattern and the narrative path of the literary discourse. These three stages helps us determine the degree of connection between the literary discourse of the work and the social discourses of its time. Examining these categories, it is concluded that traditionalism plays a role not only as an ideological problem but also as a linguistic problem in the two levels of meaning and narrative syntax in this novel. The gender diversity of language was studied in many examples because language as a social phenomenon is closely related to social and contractual perceptions. Analytical quotes also mention the language of social class or power division which leads to lexical and conceptual diversity and although imitation or rebellion. Narrative discourse analysis and the method of sociological criticism from Zima's point of view in confirming the main hypothesis of this research that there is a critical relationship between the literary discourse of the novel and the social discourse that dominates the outer space of the work, finally accepting or rejecting the interdiscourse relationship between the text and ideology and discovering the social mechanism of the word. Narrative meaning and syntax resulted that the elements of the literary text, apart from their story-like function, also perform specific social functions. Because the ruling social discourse is trying to induce semantic bipolarity and subsequently its narrative style in the literary discourse, the literary discourse of Del Foulad's novel has led to the creation of the opposite of the ruling social discourse at the time of its production.

Keywords

Subjects

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Language Related Research
Volume 14, Issue 4 - Serial Number 76
September and October 2023
Pages 157-186