Imagic iconicity in Saad Surah : a morphophonemic study

Abstract EN

Iconicity, the controversial topic over which a lot of ink has been spilt, still manages to occupy the pages of researchers willing to further investigate this inherently interdisciplinary phenomenon.

This research is one of many attempts testifying to the claim that iconicity is one possible answer to the notoriously elusive question of the relation between language and reality.

For that reason, the endeavor of the ongoing study is to provide linguistically textual evidence for the existence of iconicity as a phonosymbolic process in the discourse of Muslim’s most glorious book, the Quran.

The visual, auditory, and tactile dimensions of iconicity on the imagic level take readers on a hypnotic journey through the 88 verses of Saad surah.

The paper uses the concept phonological iconicity as a blanket term for a broad range of phenomena, including what has been referred to as sound-symbolism, mimetics, ideophones, phonesthemes, and onomatopoeia.

Hence crossing the borders of morphological iconicity, whenever the necessity for the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes is at hand.

Keeping in mind that these different phenomena, while varying in amount and degree, all have in common some non-arbitrary, iconic mapping between form and meaning.

As the finest work of classical Arabic literature, the holy Quran presents a marvelous start for a linguistic study of the appearance, form, and representation of phonological iconicity in Arabic language.

Fischer and Nanny’s (1999) imagic iconicity is adopted to facilitate the assessment of phonological iconicity in Saad surah.

The apprehension for iconicity principles heads off from phonemes to morphemes and finally to visual, tactile, and rhythmical features.

In providing a comprehensive overview of the presence of imagic iconicity in Saad surah, the study challenges the naïve restriction of iconicity to mere onomatopoeia, as well as testifying to the semiotic foundations of iconicity in Quranic language