Re-reading the Semiotic Dimensions of Concepts in Imruʾ al-Qays’ Muʿallaqa Based on Charles Peirce’s Theory

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Ezzat Molla Ebrahimi ¹

Mansooreh Ahmadi Jafari ²

¹ Professor in Arabic Language and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Shar-e-Qods Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jall.2026.90487.1471

Abstract

Meaning in literary texts emerges beyond the explicit level of words, manifesting instead within latent layers of imagery, action, and collective memory. Accessing such meaning therefore necessitates an analytical framework capable of tracing the gradual unfolding of signification across successive layers. In this regard, Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic system—with its triadic distinction of icon, index, and symbol, corresponding to the phenomenological categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness—provides a robust conceptual model for examining the dynamics of meaning. Employing a descriptive-analytical method, the present study examines the internal mechanisms of signification in the Mu‘allaqa of Imru’ al-Qais, a foundational ode of the pre-Islamic Arabic poetic tradition that offers fertile ground for exploring the evolution of meaning. Guided by Peirce’s three-level model, the study analyzes linguistic elements, narrative shifts, and transformations of imagery in order to elucidate how meaning is generated and progressively transformed within the poem’s structure, while also clarifying the relation between lived experience and the represented world. To achieve this aim, six central semantic categories were extracted from the text, and seventy-seven signs were classified and interpreted across the three semiotic levels. The findings indicate that icons foreground sensory experience, indices articulate the dialectical relation between action and meaning, and symbols stabilize signification within cultural-historical horizons. Consequently, the Mu‘allaqa’s multilayered structure, through a semiotic continuum, enters a system grounded in human action and meaning-making within a social context. This process generates collective reflections that transcend individual experience, ultimately culminating in an ontological reflection on impermanence and the passage of time.
 
 

Keywords

Peircean Semiotics

Icon

Index

Symbol

Imruʾ al-Qays’ Muʿallaqa

Subjects

• Semiotics

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