discursive –semiotics criticism of personification as a process in literary discourse: a case study of “the mouse” by choobak’

personification is a tool that a writer uses to change the objective position of words into the subjective form. using personification, writers show their creativity. attributing human traits to non-human is the traditional description of personification. in this article we go beyond the limits of this definition. we hypothesized that personification is a process which is formed by many factors in a context and without considering these factors, we cannot draw right conclusions that match up with the real nature of discourse. a short-persian story called “the mouse”, by choobak, a famous iranian writer, was chosen to be studied on the basis of discursive-semiotics, to show how the process of personification forms. it was assumed that discontinuance and tensive-function affect the formation of the process of personification. at last, the results confirmed our hypothesis. furthermore, the results revealed that the process has a minimal and a maximal side. if attributing human traits is absent, personification process leads to the minimal side and if there is a tendency to attribute human traits increases, the process leads to the maximal side. this paper paves the way for giving dynamic descriptions for all literal items.