Multidisciplinary Approach to the Texts: Semiotic Analysis of the Process of Meaning Construction in O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi (original) (raw)

In this study, we determined to analyze the production process of the semantic universe of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” in this study. We carried out the research by taking advantage of the data from narratology and semiotics. Primarily, we evaluated the text within the scope of narratology. First, we tried to account for the narrative considering the theory of enunciation and then to put forward the basic structure of the text according to Larivaille’s five-staged narrative profile. After that, we dealt with the text within the literary semiotics. At this point, we scrutinized the constituent elements of the narrative in different semantic stratums as part of Paris School’s semiotics trajectory. In this regard, we had the opportunity to observe the formative elements of the text at the surface and deep levels of meaning and to explain how these elements are articulated with each other to create the fiction of the narrative as a meaningful whole. We practiced upon Greimas’s four-staged narrative programme, actantial schema, and semiotic square in the analysis of the formative elements taking place at various meaning levels of the text. As a result, we tried to find answers to the questions of how O. Henry created the semantic universe of the text and of what the role of culture is in the creation of meaning in this universe.