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Scary Tehran by Moshfegh Kashani is considered as a pioneering social novel in Iran.In this article, we have tried to examine this novel from the social science perspective in order to explain its semiotics and answer the question of what signs this novel implies and whether the symptoms are ideological. To this end, following some preliminary introduction of the science of semiotics, we have analyzed the manifestation of signs in this literary work. Our findings indicate that the author has efficiently benefited from using signs in order to portray social problems such as social class differences, bipolar social system, and injustice. Further, the author  highlights the ideological concept of the symptoms and signs and how they represent the contrasts between the rich and the poor of late Qajar Tehran.

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Semiotics is one of the theories of reading literary texts.  This theory systematically studies the causes and factors involved in the process of production and interpretation of the signs. One of the main topics in semiotics deals with implicit meaning wherein the scholars examine the implied significance of the signs in addition to their explicit significance. Sadegh Chubak’s Tangsir is one of the most successful contemporary Iranian literary novels. Most of the events in this fiction, characters, actions, scenes, and names have implicit and connotative meanings that by analyzing them, the underlying layers of the texts will be discovered. This study attempts to investigate the implicit significance of the novel. To this end, first, a brief explanation of semiotics and implicit significance is put forth. Then the implicit significance of Tangsir will be presented in three categories of: the anticolonial, sociological and mythical. The results of this study indicate that the implicit anticolonial significance of the novel raises the issue of the conspiracies of British colonialism in the southern regions of Iran. The sociological significance of the novel portrays a community drowned in misery, poverty, suppression, and oppression. And the mythical significance of the novel indicates the ritual of sacrificing a cow in Mithraism and the archetype of crossing water in myths.
 

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Semiotics is a research approach which evaluates the signs to understanding the hidden meaning in the context. This approach which utilize linguistics, sociology, and literary criticism, is an efficient way of analysis. Semiotic analysis of travelogues provides an opportunity to a new reading and better understanding of them. Moreover, semiotic analysis can clarify the role of travelogues in delineating and representing the social and cultural status of societies. Based on Pierre Guiraud’s theory, this paper attempts to reveal the hidden aspects of identity, culture and social customs of explored lands by reviewing the social signs in Haj Sayyah travelogue, which is the longest travelogue of an ordinary person with regard to time and place during the Naseri Era. Using a descriptive-analytic method, this study compares and sometimes contrasts the Iranian-Islamic culture with the European culture and the confrontation of human beings with themselves and the environment. The findings show that religious beliefs and issues, as signs of identity, are the most important concern for the writer who dealt with them critically both inside and outside of Iran. As a young clergyman, his excessive attention to holy places like mosques, temples and churches suggests his religious identity. 
 

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Semiotics is an interdisciplinary approach that examines sign systems in a literary work; Among the approaches to semiotics is the theory of Michael Riffaterre, a French-American theorist on the semiotics of poetry. According to this approach, the reader is a very important factor in the process of reading the text; Riffaterre believes that meaning is always present in the text of a poem and only the reader should extract it. In his view, the meanings of poetry should be understood on its own, not by referring its signs to external realizations, and understanding poetry requires the reader to try to find an intertwined network of signs, and in this regard, her approach can also be considered as a reader-cantered critique. In this research, Ebtehaj's poem " Arghavan" [English Equivalent: purple] has been analysed using Riffaterre approach. The central idea of ​​the poem is "the isolation of the poet in an inappropriate social space", which is expressed in different ways in the text of the poem. Although this idea is not mentioned directly in the poem, the widely used propositions and clichés of the language that the poet uses by repeating them in the process of "over determination" or through the "conversion" process, by modifying those propositions, or using the "expansion" process, by extending the general idea to more detailed ideas. In addition, by discovering two semantic processes of "accumulation" as well as "descriptive anthologies", which all come from the same source and guide the poem to induce a single theme, the descriptive anthology of " Azadi" (freedom) that evokes words such as "morning", "spring", "candle", "lamp", "sun", "dawn" and "sun"; In contrast to "Sharayet-e Namonaseb-e Ejtemaei" (unfavourable social conditions) that the "forgotten silent corner", "crypt" and "night of darkness" evoke the same concept.