On The Detective Plots In Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone Based On Eco's Semiotics

In terms of the theoretical framework of this thesis,the basis for choosing the topic lies in the following considerations.Firstly,Umberto Eco's semiotics has the characteristics of encyclopedia,which is the authoritative semiotic works after Saussure's and Peirce's.Secondly,Eco's semiotics,including the theory of sign,theory of codes and theory of sign production,holds that culture is a communication system based on the system of signification,which replaces the narrow linguistic structure principle with the universal code principle,and extrapolates linguistic semiotics to non-linguistic cultural systems.Finally,his theory realizes the integration of language,literature and culture,and a new situation of literary and cultural studies has been created.The study of Eco in the West is quite adequate,but the study of Eco in China mainly focuses on his hermeneutics,aesthetics and novels,and there is no systematic study of his semiotics,which is obviously inconsistent with the academic status of Eco's semiotics in the world.In terms of the selected text,the basis for choosing the topic lies in the following considerations.First,Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has been highly praised and loved by readers as soon as it was published.The plots in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone are so complicated that they bring readers directly into the world of magic,which is extremely tense and adventurous.Second,Through literature review,it is found that foreign studies on the Harry Potter series mainly focus on the following six aspects: political interpretation,literary interpretation,economic and legal interpretation,educational interpretation,film media interpretation and psychological interpretation.The domestic research on the Harry Potter series mainly lies in the following three aspects: translation,linguistics and literature.There is no semiotic interpretation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone either abroad or at home.Therefore,this article takes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as the text,and analyzes the detective plots contained in it with Eco's semiotics.Although the magic world itself does not exist,and has extraordinary legend and mystery,all the things described in the novel are fictitious but not false,which conforms to the logic of daily affairs and human feelings.Therefore,the analysis of the detective plots can be done by reasoning.Eco claimed people can use signs to tell lies,which guarantees that the meaning of signs is separated from the entity.Thus his theory is suitable for the study of the virtual world.The combination of text and theory proves the conclusions.First,Eco' theory of codes and theory of sign production can be used to analyze literary works,especially detective plots with suspense and inference.Second,there are two worlds in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: the Muggle world and the magic world.Eco's theory of codes regards objects as cultural units.The correspondence of expression and content in cultural units needs the general recognition from social members.Therefore,the different recognitions of the same object in the Muggle world and the magic world reflect the thought of Eco's cultural units.The signs of the magic world have rich meanings and implied meanings,which conforms to the view of Eco's connotative semiotics.Codes theory is suitable for analyzing the typical codes of the magic world.Third,Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone revolves around the possibility of the Philosopher's Stone being stolen and who will steal it.At this time,the four modes by which Eco's signs are recognized can help readers better understand why Harry,Ron and Hermione point their suspicious targets at Snape from the cognitive level of signs.As far as research contributions are concerned.First,this thesis analyzes the detective plots in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone based on Eco's semiotics,which provides new ideas and a new perspective for later scholars to study the novel.Second,this thesis provides a reference for the application of codes theory and the theory of sign production in text analysis,and reveals the powerful explanatory power of signification semiotics and communicative semiotics in the analysis of novel plots.