Sign as Meaning Meaning as Sign: The Actantial Narrative Schema in Mukoma Ngugi’s Nairobi Heat

Abstract

The study of signs or symbols and how they produce meanings in social communication falls within the confine of Semiotics. Semiotics is a theory of signification which endeavours to investigate the possibility of meanings generation in all contexts including works of literature. This paper aims in purpose to examine and describe the actantial narrative schema of Mukoma Wa Thiongƒ??oƒ??s Nairobi Heat, a crime or detective novel of the Whodunit genre. The actantial narrative schema was developed by Algirdas Julien Greimas, a Lithuanian semiotician as a tool for structural account of narratives. The actantial model has six actants divided into three binary oppositions each of which forms an axis of the actantial description and also the relationship among the actants.

Keywords

A. J. greimas actantial narrative schema literary semiotics nairobi heat. sign

  • Research Identity (RIN)

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  • Language & Pages

    English, 52-56

  • Classification

    FOR Code: 130205