THE CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SEMANTICS OF APPARELS IN LITERATURE: A CRITICAL STUDY

Abstract [English]

Apparel can be considered an object of sociological and historical research since it is drawn out of a mass of a society independent of the individual whereas dressing implies the personal mode with which the wearer adopts the dress that is proposed to them by their social group. We are likely to come across a kind of coincidence between dress and dressing. There is always a kind of ambiguity as to how an item of clothing evolves and eventually changes and this confusion makes the plotting of a history of clothing rather difficult. The dress which cannot be reduced to its protective or ornamental function is a privileged semiotic field. The signifying function of dress makes it a social object. The elements of fashion are also seen as applied to the world of fiction as well as its movie adaptations. The peculiarities of a character’s inner self and the strong ties it has with the development of the plot make the attire of a character vital in terms of the unsaid facts about the characters as well as their lives. Linking a character and the plot with the way he/she carries himself/herself makes the act of reading more interesting. In this paper, a critical study is made on the processes and images that apparels provide for the characters in a literary work, based on the linguistic model proposed by Roland Barthes.