İdil Sanat ve Dil Dergisi
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Cilt 6, Sayı 33  Yaz I 2017  (ISSN: 2146-9903, E-ISSN: 2147-3056)
Sevcan IŞIK

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1497597951 A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE OLD CHIEF MSHLANGA BASED ON GREIMAS’S NARRATIVE SEMIOTICS

This paper aims to analyze the short story The Old ChiefMshlanga(1951)by Dorris Lessing according to Greimas’s actantial model. It covers the period from the childhood of unnamed protagonist to her adolescence. In the story, the opposition between black culture and white culture is of great importance in giving the meaning of the text. As a child, the girl whose nickname Nkosikaas (S1) has an instilled white perspective towards the natives. She takes for granted them through the fairy tales she has read and through the white culture imposed on her by her parents. This is her inverted reality until she encounters the old Chief Mshlanga (S2). After that S1 changes her attitude towards the natives, offers and takes greetings with them and by doing this she tries to justify her position as a white settler in the lands of S2, which brings no gain to the blacks neither in the sense of the unequal treatment of them or the usurpation of their lands. The meaning of the story will be searched from surface level to the abstract or deep one, that is, narrative, discursive and logical-semantic respectively. In the former, the story will be segmented into three main segments which will include a many sub-segments. In these segments, the actions and actants that can be an individual or an abstract thing will be displayed in accordance with their places in time and space. Besides, there will be a focus on the figurative natures of the actants. Lastly, when the logical-semantic level is concerned the oppositions that compose the main theme of the narrative will be shown in semiotic squares.

Keywords: Semitics, Doris Lessing, black culture, white culture, and oppositions.