Semiotics of the Mask in Abdullah Thabet’s The Sleeping Face

Abstract

This paper, entitled (Semiotics of the Mask in Abdullah Thabet’s The Slpeeing Face), sheds light on an artistic technique and means of expression that the novelist relies on in the weaving of his narrative imagination, which is the mask technique. The paper aims to expose the implications and manifestations of the mask and its asethetic formulation in the text. This creative technique leads to a number of questions: How did the writer use the mask in creating his narrative world? What are the indications and signs that he is suggesting in the text? Then what is the aesthetic and artistic impact that is formed on the construction of the text? The paper uses the semiotic methodology based on theories of Pierce and Germas to address these questions. Considering that these theories are closer to what my study aims at in tracing the signification and linking it together through a group of minor structures that have nodded their signs at the superficial level of the narrative structure, and then linked to deep relations within the text at the deep level, the researcher feels it is necessary to divide the paper into two sections represented in the formations of the mask and its connotations and the structure of the mask according to the surface structure and the deep structure. The paper exposes linguistic aesthetics of the mask represented in linguistic intensification, which grants the novel a poetic dimension that transforms the text into more aesthetic depth. Moreover, the writer uses the mask grants the text ambiguity and controls the harmony between the mask and othre structural elements, so the text comes up with a major theme that all narrative construction elements help to achieve. Keywords: The novel, semiotics, Saudi Arabia, the mask, literature, Arabic.