The Concept of Honor in the Language of Early Arabic Poetry: A Cultural Linguistic Study

The book presents an ethnolinguistic study on lexical expressions of honor in the Language of Early Arabic Poetry. It is the first application of Cultural-Linguistic methodology in research on the language and culture of al-Jahiliyya Arabs. Consequently, it is one of the first cultural cognitive linguistic studies on Classical Arabic semantics and lexicology. The book examines the use of Arabic honor-related lexis in the oral-formulaic pre-Islamic poetry, and interprets lexical expressions as encoding cultural conceptualizations: cognitive schemata and categories, and conceptual metaphors and metonymies. An exhaustive description of pre-Islamic Arabic cultural models of honor and social evaluation is offered alongside semantic frames for discourses of honor available to pre-Islamic Arabs.