The Concept of Honor in the Language of Early Arabic Poetry

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.