Social Semiotic Analysis of the Language of Discrimination in Fiction

Abstract

Literature, being a semiotic mode of representation, seems to be a linguistic codification of various socio-cultural and socio-political actions and interactions. It is interesting to revisit the manner in which creative writers ‘use’ signs to represent classified units of a particular community and construct a ‘symbolic community’ in his/her fiction. Since every community is different, the signs used by one social/cultural community are likely to vary across communities. A good comparison would show how individual creativity chooses signs from the changing social circumstances and new social identities to design and locate real social stratification into a textual one. The paper attempts to take a close at how social semiotics helps us in negotiating the social dimensions of meaning, and of the power of human processes of signification and interpretation (known as semiosis) in shaping individuals and societies.