The Dark Koran: A Semantic Analysis of the Koranic Darknesses (ẓulumāt) and their Metaphorical Usage

Arabica ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 185-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanne Louise Christiansen

Darkness (ẓulumāt) as a Koranic literary image has not been systematically analyzed, even though it is connected to fundamental Koranic topics such as understanding, salvation and the omniscience of God. The aim of this article is to argue for a close reading of the occurrences of ẓulumāt in the Koran and to discuss their metaphorical usage. By joining cognitive metaphor theories with the Koranic material, the article contributes to a new understanding of how and why modes of darkness are applied in the Koran. In the article, I argue for a six-fold classification of the occurrences, in which the utilization of particularly two conceptual metaphors, a mental state is darkness and protection is darkness appear. The former is employed to explain the imperative difference between belief and unbelief through the binary pair of darkness and light, whereas the latter is chosen to elucidate the omniscience of the Koranic God.

Author(s):  
Irzam Sarif S ◽  
Yuyu Yohana Risagarniwa ◽  
Nani Sunarni

Abstract. Conceptual metaphors are the result of mental construction, conceptualization of the experience of human life. In Japanese, metaphorical features are often found in conveying information so that information can be easily understood. This study aimed to describe the conceptual metaphors found at the Japanese Prime Minister's Press Conference, Shinzo Abe on March 14 and 28, 2020 through the official website kantei.go.jp. The research method used was descriptive qualitative analysis. Data were collected by taking text that contained metaphorical elements and then selected. Data selection was based on the basic principle of metaphor, which was the mapping from the source domain to the target domain. Then the data were classified based on the type of metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson and the type of image scheme by Cruse and Croft. Based on the study done, there were three types of conceptual metaphors, 1) Structural metaphors with conceptuals meaning of enemy, medical treatment, control, and mind; 2) Orientational metaphors with conceptual meaning of disadvantage, and approval; 3) Ontological metaphors with conceptuals meaning of finance, and emotion. In addition, there were also six types of image schemes, namely the image scheme of Strength, Existence, Identity, Scale, Space, and Unity.Keywords: Conceptual Meaning, Press Conference, Cognitive Semantic, Image Scheme


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-201
Author(s):  
Kristian Petersen

Abstract The True Explanation of the Orthodox Teaching (Zhengjiao zhenquan 正教真詮), published in 1642 by Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 (ca. 1590–1658), is the oldest extant text in the Han Kitab, a Sino-Islamic canon. This literature employed Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist language and imagery to explain Islamic thought. Wang was a pioneering figure in the institutionalization of this distinct Sino-Islamic discourse and crystallized much of the terminology used throughout subsequent Han Kitab literature. In the Zhengjiao zhenquan, Wang analyzes the spiritual nature of the heart, dividing it into three aspects and seven levels. These seven levels are correlative of the classification of subtleties (laṭāʾif ) or stages (aṭwār) developed by authors affiliated with the Kubrawi Sufi order. In this article, Wang’s spiritual taxonomy is analyzed in comparison with delineations of the multiple levels of the heart determined by Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1256) and Nūr al-Dīn Isfarāyīnī (d. 1317). Through a close reading of the sources I establish the intellectual influences from these authors’ thought on Wang’s explanation of Islam. By doing so we begin to determine the various sources for Sino-Islamic thought and determine an exact lexical register of Chinese language Islamic literature.


Author(s):  
Vladimir Gurin ◽  
Elena Obletsova

The subject of this research is the proverbs and sayings with lexical components “truth” and “lie” in the English language. The relevance of their studying is substantiated by the need in theoretical conceptualization and practical implementation of these phraseological units in aspect of the problem of interrelation between cultural and language, which contributes to more profound understanding of national mentality reflected in the English linguistic worldview. The article explores and analyzes the phenomena of proverbs and sayings, determines their common and differentiating traits. Using the method of semantic analysis, the author develops the classification of proverbs and sayings with lexical components “truth” and “lie”, as well as describes theory structure. As a result of the conducted research, the author determined 31 proverbs and sayings. They reveal the multifaceted nature of human existence, elucidate the perception of truth and lie in the English-language world. Truth and lie are associated with the means of achieving something. At the same time, truth does not always has a positive connotation, but serve as a tool for causing harm to others. Lie is the reason of negative, undesired events.


Author(s):  
Aleksei V. Sosnin ◽  
◽  
Yuliya V. Balakina ◽  

The article examines the metaphor London-as-the-World in the structure of the London text of English linguistic culture (i.e., an emic or invariant text for a group of texts related to the British capital). Such an analysis makes it possible to update the most important dimension of the London text: its objects turns out to be a key component of Englishness, being conceptualized as a model of all-English and world processes, as an analogy of the civilized world and the universe. The metaphorical realizations of the London text are seen as the result of conceptual fusion. The research cited in the article is carried out at the junction of the cognitive and semiotic approaches, according to which socially significant mental entities are examined via a semantic analysis of corresponding supertexts. The integration of the cognitive and the semiotic is effected within the framework of unified semantics. Thereby a semiotic analysis of text consists in singling out propositions of diverse degrees of similarity in it, in the selection and classification of predicates with which characters and “things” are endowed in the text, and in the inclusion of individual entities from the text in the general categories, what reveals the picture of the world deep structure from the standpoint of that text. The article draws on the literary canon of New English, and a study into that material educes a continuity in the metaphors and the means of their linguistic expression that were used by the English-speaking community to structure the reality. The article thus postulates the relative stability of London text as a supertextual entity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (99) ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
NATALIA V. KOZLOVSKAYA ◽  
ALINA S. PAVLOVA

The article deals with the semantic analysis and reveals the peculiarities of the adaptation and functioning of the adjective neologismsderived from a borrowed stemby adding a Russian derivational affix.In the course of the first-stage researchthe thematic classification of the above-mentioned “hybrid” adjectivesis made (the current samplecomprises approximately 200 lexical units).The investigation of the lexical data has shown that the majority of “hybrid” adjectives are derived from English stems and mainly consist of relative adjectives. The article analyses the main derivational patterns in the word-formation of adjectives derived from borrowed nouns and adjectives, and the most productive suffixes are revealed. It is stated that the tendency for adjective derivation from the English stems ending in -ing (the trend which was first observed in the 1990s) has been growing rapidly at the beginning of the 21st century.The analysis of variedlexical data has shown that the functioning of “hybrid” adjectives in the texts different in genre and styleis connected with the phenomenon of variationwhich consists in the difference in root spelling, as well as in the competition between the adjective suffixes. In the concluding part of the article, the authors describe peculiar properties of semantic adaptation which are typical of adjective neologisms derived from loan-word stems.


Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (228) ◽  
pp. 223-235
Author(s):  
Winfried Nöth

AbstractThe paper begins with a survey of the state of the art in multimodal research, an international trend in applied semiotics, linguistics, and media studies, and goes on to compare its approach to verbal and nonverbal signs to Charles S. Peirce’s approach to signs and their classification. The author introduces the concept of transmodality to characterize the way in which Peirce’s classification of signs reflects the modes of multimodality research and argues that Peirce’s classification of the signs takes modes and modalities in two different respects into consideration, (1) from the perspective of the sign and (2) from the one of its interpretant. While current research in multimodality has its focus on the (external) sign in a communicative process, Peirce considers additionally the multimodality of the interpretants, i.e., the mental icons and indexical scenarios evoked in the interpreters’ minds. The paper illustrates and comments on the Peircean method of studying the multi and transmodality of signs in an analysis of Peirce’s close reading of Luke 19:30 in MS 599, Reason’s Rules, of c. 1902. As a sign, this text is “monomodal” insofar as it consists of printed words only. The study shows in which respects the interpretants of this text evince trans and multimodality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 132 ◽  
pp. 1523-1532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damodar Reddy Edla ◽  
Kunal Mangalorekar ◽  
Gauri Dhavalikar ◽  
Shubham Dodia

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