The Application of Michael Rifatter’s Semiotic Theory in the Analysis of the Poem “Khoz Vardat al-Salje Khoz al-Kairouaniat” by Saadi Yousef

Michael Rifatter’s semiotics is one of the approaches of literary criticism of the contemporary era. It offers a coherent framework for critique and analysis of poetry. The bases of this theory are the discovery of the semantic network of poetry based on interpretation according to the reader’s literary ability and trying to discover the origin of the text by passing from heuristic reading to interpretive reading. This study tries to analyze the semiotic processes of Saadi Yousef’s poem “Khoz Vardat al -Salje Khoz al-Kairouaniat” based on Rifatter’s semiotic theory in order to reach the hidden layers of the text. The heuristic reading of this poem expresses the dramatic story of the poet’s grieving soul as he is on a train which journeys to distant lands and takes him farther away from his homeland. But the retroactive reading of the poem shows that it has five accumulations and a descriptive system. By going from the quote level (appearance) to the higher level, by finding the codes in the poem as well as the ungrammaticalities and semiotics for each of them, the authors have found explanation for the main subject (hypogram) and the effect of the semantic structure of the text (matrix). The analysis of this poem shows that it is the product of expanding several matrices such as despair and sorrow, exile and homesickness, love for the homeland, oppression and repression, domination of foreigners over the poet’s homeland, invitation to fighting back, portraying the plundered Iraq, and disappointment with the present situation.