Ali Piranishal; Soghra Falahati; Masoomeh Rabiee
Abstract
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Maqamah is a type of literary text that has enjoyed a broad and pervasive position in certain periods of Arabic literature; a number of notable writers such as Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani, al-Hariri, etc. as well as Nasif al-Yaziji in the contemporary era have worked ...
Read More
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Maqamah is a type of literary text that has enjoyed a broad and pervasive position in certain periods of Arabic literature; a number of notable writers such as Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani, al-Hariri, etc. as well as Nasif al-Yaziji in the contemporary era have worked in this area. Since the majority of sciences deal with literature, various aspects of text linguistics have formed a vast portion of linguistic studies. Halliday’s functional approach is one of the prominent theories in this area in which novel dimensions of text linguistics are analyzed based on its role or function. Albeit, there is an ongoing debate among critics regarding the level of cohesion in “Maqamat”. In this study, it was attempted to examine text cohesion factors and their concordance in Maqamah Saviyah al-Hariri in light of Halliday and Hasan’s theory. It is worth mentioning the fact that there has been numerous studies in the area of cohesion and Maqamat, yet there has been no research focusing on “cohesion” and “aesthetics” in “Maqamat al-Hariri”
Review of Literature
In their studies in 1976, the founders of text cohesion theory, Halliday and Hasan, examined texts and relations among sentences and named such connections as cohesion. According to the views of these two linguists, cohesion is a semantic concept which highlights semantic relations present in texts and specifies them either as textual or non-textual (Halliday, 1976). They indicated five factors including reference, substitution, ellipsis, lexical cohesion, and conjunction as tools creating cohesion in texts; in this paper, conjunction is investigated.
Method
In this study, it is attempted to examine Maqamah Saviyah al-Hariri through the descriptive analytical method regarding conjunction, i.e. one of the factors for text cohesion, so as to provide answers to the following research questions according to statistics and analysis on the functions of conjunctive devices:
Which one of these subcategories (additive, causal, adversative, and temporal) are more frequent in Maqamah al-Hariri?
What impact has the author’s mastery of employing language capabilities and forming a rhythmic prose had on the aesthetics of the text’s cohesion?
Results and Discussion
As one of the elements of text cohesion, conjunctions involve the presence of sematic relations between sentences in a text which, according to Halliday and Hasan, can be classified into four types including additive, causal, adversative, and temporal. Being the eleventh “maqamah”, the story of Maqamah Saviyah takes place in Saveh cemetery (of which the name “maqamah” is a derivative) and entails a number of moral points. In the story, the protagonist arrives at the corpse being buried and following a shocking speech often accompanied by Quranic verses and hadith as well as rhetorical devices, similes, allusions and metaphors, he reminds people of bitter truths which persuades them to contemplate; he then fills his sack of gifts from the people and leaves the place.
In the Arabic language, devices for these conjunctive elements include “واو، فاء، لذا، لأنّ، لکن، ثمّ...” which play a clear role in Maqamah and even daily spoken language, to the extent that textual imagination appears to be impossible without such devices; this is due to the fact that the presence of a relation between sentences is necessary for the text to become cohesive. It is worth mentioning that the most used additive device is the conjunctive, “واو”, which plays its role within independent sentences throughout the text and contributes to the text’s cohesion. Other devices such as “فاء” involve broader functions, playing a significant role in various areas such as additive, causal and conditionals; on the other hand, in addition to bringing conjunction to the text, conjunctive devices result in grammatical balance and phonetic unity in sentences, inducing certain musicality to the text which has led to the formal aesthetics along with an increased semantic power in the text.
Conclusion
According to the important results of the study, additive and adversative devices involved the highest and lowest frequency of use in Maqamah Saviyah with 64.4 and 2.3%, respectively, which is due to the descriptive nature of the text. Causal and conditional relations with 12.3% and temporal relation with a frequency of 18.8% connect the events of the story, denoting death and separation, similar to a chain. In other words, the story begins with death and separation and ends with the separation between the narrator and the protagonist, the former leaving from the right side towards southern winds while the latter, Abu Zeyd Sarouji going left towards the northern wind. In addition to bringing semantic cohesion to the text, the use of conjunctions have also enhanced the aesthetic aspects of Maqamah.
Seyyed Mehdi Masboogh; Shahram Delshad
Abstract
Expanded abstract
1- Introduction
Most of the literary critics consider Arabic classical poetry as lacking cohesion and organic unity and believe that long Arabic odes do not have the necessary cohesion and do not have a good and ordered organization. But lack of cohesion in an ode as a whole does ...
Read More
Expanded abstract
1- Introduction
Most of the literary critics consider Arabic classical poetry as lacking cohesion and organic unity and believe that long Arabic odes do not have the necessary cohesion and do not have a good and ordered organization. But lack of cohesion in an ode as a whole does not indicate lack of cohesion in its various parts. That is, if an ode is divided into four parts, maybe there is no unity among its different parts but there is a special cohesion and harmony between the verses of each of these parts. The present study has been written in order to explain the cohesion between the internal parts of classical Arabic ode. Therefore, the verses describing wolf by Buhturi, the well-known poem of the Abbasid period, are criticized and analyzed through descriptive-analytical method and based on a part of Cohesion Theory of Michael Halliday, known as conjunctive cohesion, in order to obtain the application of this theory in Arabic descriptive poetry as part of long Arabic odes.
2- Theoretical Framework
There is a kind of cohesion called conjunctive cohesion. In this method, conjunctive devices create cohesion between textual propositions larger than a word, and establish linkage between the last and the next propositions (Khatabi, 1991). Hence, conjunctive cohesion means a semantic and logical relationship between the sentences of the text. Conjunctive cohesion is divided into four types of additive, causal, adversative, and temporal” (Lotfi Pour Saedi, 2006).
Therefore, there is a significant difference between this type of cohesion and other types of cohesion; because in this type of cohesion the connection between two sentences and two sections or narrative clauses is direct (Zanad, 1993). Some of these devices have an incremental function and add additional information and knowledge to the text and make the sentence more meaningful than the previous sentence. Sometimes, they also create an opposite and contradictory meaning in the text and are brought against the previous subject; but some of them are added to the text in order to create a result and they create a causal relationship between textual propositions or cause the creation of a temporal relationship in the text (Khatabi, 1991).
3- Research Method
The present study tries to criticize and analyze this part of the ode through the descriptive-analytical method and according to Michael Halliday’s theory (Born in 1925) and the four factors of conjunctive cohesion, and measure the application and reflection of conjunctive elements in these verses and indicate their frequency, function, and implications.
4- Research Findings and Discussion
- If we look at the most famous descriptive odes of classical literature, we will see that these odes have various types of additive relations. In the verses describing the wolf by Buhturi, this type of cohesion is seen in a beautiful manner; such that all the things in this part of the ode have been described correctly and completely and the reader is persuaded. These verses, using the functions of additive relation, have been able to look as a painting panel with inclusiveness of the elements, and provide a comprehensive picture of the battle scene to the audience.
- Any text may consist of a series of contradictory propositions and events that the writer expresses using adversative conjunctive elements. This subject is less used in descriptive texts due to the correlation and coherence of the descriptive elements; because the increasing use of this relation is when the text consists of different interactions and in some cases, these actions may be against each other. Although the verses describing the wolf by Buhturi have a set of semantic and structural contrast, these contrasts have less appeared in the text layout, and the poet has less used the devices of adversative relation.
- When the descriptive verses of Buhturi become dramatic with a moving aspect, a causal relation is created in them; and when he is merely describing and expressing the features of things, the causal relation becomes low in that; given the dominance of the descriptive element on the dramatic and narrative elements in these verses, the amount of using causal relation is lower in these verses.
- Buhturi, in his verses describing the wolf, after describing the night and the state of hunger and emaciation of the wolf, describes his battle with the wolf, in which temporal devices are seen increasingly. In addition, the description of his battle with wolf requires using a temporal relation because every event involves time. Therefore, in this part, we can see a sequencing and temporal continuity between the verses. So, the poet in this part has no way other than using the devices of temporal relation; for example, the words “Somma”, “Fa’”, and “Vav” have been used many times.
5- Conclusion
From what has been mentioned in this study, the following results can be obtained:
In these verses, the poet has described his battle with the wolf coherently and beautifully and has used conjunctive devices in different methods in order to give cohesion to the verses. The overall result of the research shows that Buhturi, using the factors of conjunctive cohesion, has been able to compose a cohesive poetry that its elements are related from the beginning to the end, and this link and cohesion has been achieved through a proper and logical use of these devices. Overall, additive devices such as reference “Vav” and also temporal devices such as “Fa’” have a great role in giving cohesion to these verses.
