Eco-semiotics: Structural Analysis of Disintegrated Umwelt in Rafat’s Poetry

Abstract

Lust for modern lifestyle and money made man oblivious to nature. Man is depleting the natural resources to accomplish his lust. This lust is creating environmental issues that bring about the exploitation of umwelt and nature. This qualitative research, keeping up with the critical models of eco-semiotics and the text-based analysis, analyzes some of Rafat’s poems to represent the crisis of umwelt that arises in reaction to the deterioration of relations between human culture and the nonhuman environment. The primary focus is on the semiotic nature of ecosystems by examining semiotic relations between organisms, frequently concentrating on animals, and the environment, the role of semiosis in ecosystems, and intra- and interspecies communicative relations. The secondary focus is on the space, created by the uncaring nature of man between organism and their umwelt, which results in the waning of species and malfunctioning of the ecosystem. Outcomes of these findings discover how Rafat attempts to turn nonverbal and nonhuman experiences of nature into human language in the form of Eco-poetic that expresses the causes behind the decline of umwelt, distortion in nonhuman semiotics systems, and expanding gap between human and nonhuman semiotic systems. This paper imparts the understanding of human and nonhuman sign systems through poetry. Moreover, it influences the researchers to explore eco-semiotics regarding success and failure in creating economic and social value.