Discursive - semiotics Criticism of Personification as a Process in Literary Discourse: A Case Study of the Mouse by Choobak

Personification is a tool that a writer uses to change the objective position of words into the subjective form. Using personification, writers show their creativity. Attributing human traits to non-human is the traditional description of personification. In this article we go beyond the limits of this definition. We hypothesized that personification is a process which is formed by many factors in a context and without considering these factors, we cannot draw right conclusions that match up with the real nature of discourse. A short-Persian story called “the mouse”, by Choobak, a famous Iranian writer, was chosen to be studied on the basis of discursive-semiotics, to show how the process of personification forms. It was assumed that discontinuance and tensive-function affect the formation of the process of personification. At last, the results confirmed our hypothesis. Furthermore, the results revealed that the process has a minimal and a maximal side. If attributing human traits is absent, personification process leads to the minimal side and if there is a tendency to attribute human traits increases, the process leads to the maximal side. This paper paves the way for giving dynamic descriptions for all literal items.