The Paratexts of Title and Cover in Abdullah Sharuh's Novel Sawar al-Nabi (The Prophet's Bracelet): A Pragmatic Study

Abstract

     In recent decades, narrative literary genres have witnessed rapid development, with the novel assuming a position of prominence, becoming a refuge for writers and creative artists who found in it an outlet for expressing their emotions. They have invested in its semantic space and encoded connotations, enabling them to discuss various issues and helping them to convey messages relevant to reality and its problems. With the expanding scope of this literary form in modern critical studies, questions have repeatedly arisen concerning the relationship between the main text and its paratexts as fundamental guides for entering the text. Inquiries began into their nature, functions, and relationship to the text's objectives and backgrounds. This study seeks to examine the communicative meanings and pragmatic purposes operative in the two paratexts of title and cover in Abdullah Sharuh's novel Sawar al-Nabi (The Prophet's Bracelet) from a pragmatic perspective, employing a reading methodology that undertakes the task of revealing parallel texts in their pragmatic dimension, and examining how they are employed to guide the reader and enable them to cross into the world of the text, drawing upon their verbal signs and visual elements. The study adopted the pragmatic approach as a means of uncovering the communicative purposes and pragmatic functions of the paratexts, while utilizing semiotic analysis to clarify the relationship between the paratexts and the text, including the symbolic connotations and visual signals that determine the mode of reading and re-present the themes of the main text. The study concludes that the integration of these two paratexts has formed a parallel discourse that contributes to guiding the reception process, facilitates understanding and comprehension, and creates a genuine interaction between the text and its readers.