Meaning Construction Process in 87 th Sermon of Nahj al-Balaghah: A Conceptual Blending Approach

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
A. A. Labesh 1
A. Najafian 2
B. Rovshan 2
S. A. A. Soltani 3
1 PhD candidate in linguistics, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor, department of linguistics and foreign languages, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
3 Associate Professor, department of English language, Baqir al-Olum University, Qom, Iran
Abstract
It is a long time that linguistic researches have examined various corpuses, including religious texts, especially the analysis of Quranic texts. Because of its inexperienced and abstract nature, the field of religion is one of the areas where the need for metaphorical comprehension is felt more.

Nahj al-Balaghah is a significant Islamic / Shiite text with unique linguistic and rhetorical features which make the text worthwhile for studying conceptual metaphors, but no doubt, understanding metaphors cannot reveal all aspects of such texts. In some cases, recognizing and analyzing conceptual metaphors, despite being helpful, cannot go beyond a certain limit. In fact, limiting the research to mere identification of conceptual metaphors will keep a major part of the message unrevealed. The process of meaning construction is not a simple mapping between form and meaning and the systematic use of forms does not have the ability to accurately account for cognitive functions. Cognitive semanticists who have been searching for a way to explain and define the reasons and manners of meaning making processes in mind and language, gradually, proposed a theory called Conceptual Blending (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002); According to Fauconnier & Turner, these blends are not made in the form of distinct patterns, but act as a network of conceptual blends. Four spaces are involved in the formation of meaning: 1. Input space1 which is the conceptual space of the source domain, 2. Input space2 which is the conceptual space of the goal domain. Mapping of input spaces1 and 2, 3.Generic space and, 4. Blend space which is based on the projection of two input spaces on the third space.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the metaphor and explain its features and functions in the context of Nahj al-Balaghah based on conceptual blending theory, too.

It is worth noting that review of the researches carried out in the field of conceptual integration theory has shown that no research in the field of religious texts and especially Nahj al-Balaghah has been done in the framework of this theory.

The research method applied here is descriptive and its method is content analysis of the case. Sermon 87 (The introduction of the perfect human model), which is one of the most significant sermons in Nahj al-Balaghah, has been analyzed as a special case. In this study, by examining sermon 87, the stages of meaning construction is depicted through the analysis of the structure of the meaning and the cognitive mechanism of understanding the meaning. The purpose of the research is to determine which of the different types of the blending of meaning construction exists in this Sermon, and the network of conceptual blends in it is the result of going through which stages of the formation of meaning. The paper presents examples illustrating that there are different types of blending at different cases in this sermon. Some cases of mirror network, single-scope and double scope are presented in this paper which shows that Imam Ali (AS), by appealing to the most familiar and routine concepts used by the speakers of the Arabic language, such as"وَ اسْتَمْسَکَ مِنَ الْعُرَی بِأَوْثَقِهَا" , "قَدْ أَمْکَنَ الْکِتَابَ مِنْ زِمَامِهِ" , "مَعْقُولَهٌ عَلَی بَنِی أُمَیَّه" and many other cases like these, tried to express his metaphorical and elegant concepts. Of course, this diction is more complicated by the content and purpose, although complex sophisticated networks are less used in this sermon. In response to the second question, we can say that there are four spatial models, mapping between spaces, imperfect selection and emerging structure in all conceptual blending networks, although they have different characteristics in different networks. It seems that it is easier to imagine the imam's intended meaning through the imagination of the mental frameworks and the correspondence between the frameworks.


Keywords

Subjects

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Language Related Research
Volume 9, Issue 6 - Serial Number 48
January and February 2018
Pages 1-23