Semiotics of Enunciative Modulation in Selected New Yemeni Novels

Abstract

This study examines the semiotics of enunciative modulation in the corpus of the new Yemeni novel as a pragmatic strategy that transforms the written text into a speech event and grants speaking subjects an active presence that directs the generative trajectory of the narrative. It adopts a semiotic–pragmatic approach to the operation of speech acts and deictic competences in three novels—Fruit for Crows (Fakihah li-l-Gherban), A Land without Sky (Bilad bila Sama’), and Aqilat—in order to reveal how the enunciator exercises discursive power to reshape the addressee’s competence and impel them toward specific forms of response and action. The study is structured into an introduction, a theoretical preface, and three analytical sections on ideological and seductive modulation in Fruit for Crows, coercive and mental modulation in A Land without Sky, and directive and resistant modulation in Aqilat. The analysis shows the diversity of enunciative strategies—from ideological and seductive to cognitive, mental, coercive, and resistant—through the deployment of verification mechanisms, popular heritage, dream sequences, and social argumentation to construct possible worlds. The study concludes that enunciative modulation functions as a complex contractual structure that goes beyond a purely informational role to found intersubjective relations that generate meaning and interpretive effect, thereby enriching critical readings of the contemporary Yemeni novel from the perspective of speech semiotics.