The study of frequency and type of place in Azerbaijani folk narratives based on the semiotic approach of the Paris school

Narration mostly occurs in the form of place, so narrative and place are two integrated concepts. Place has an important discourse function because it causes semantic clarity of discourse factors, better and clearer interpretation of the narrative space, deeper understanding of the behavior and action of narrative elements, and finally the transcendence of meaning in the narrative.

The present article tries to use an inductive method to study the type, extent and frequency of different places in the narrative discourse of Azerbaijani folk narratives, based on the semiotic approach of the Paris school. The selected narrations are Mahi Siyahe Koochooloo, Kachal Mam Siyah, Koroghloo, Pesarake Labuforush, and Yek holoo Hezar holoo.

Findings indicate that most places in Azerbaijani folklore have features of continuous placeless, objectivity and directness. Among the triple places, the “source” has the lowest frequency and the “destination” and “fixed place” are almost equal and there is no significant difference between them.

The predominant approach in these narratives is maximal use of concrete place compared to abstract place. Continuous places also have the highest percentage of presence. However, metaphorical places have only 7% of the total, which indicates the explicit and non-metaphorical use of the narrative text and its distance from the literature. 15% of the places used in these narrations are of the transcendental type, which shows the place in the thought of the actors. Other used places, such as “spiral” or “network” locations, are very limited. It should be noted that so far such a comprehensive study of place has not been done not only in Azerbaijani folklore, but also in other existing literature, and this is one of the distinguishing points of the present work from other studies.