Part 26

It has also been said that the division of linguistic usage into figurative and literal has no basis in reality, for there is no criterion on which to base the distinction, which renders it meaningless. It is a distinction promoted by those who have no understanding of what they are saying, so that they are introducing illegitimate innovations into the law and are flouting both reason and common sense. For they have said that literal usage refers to a word used with the same meaning with which it was originally established, while figurative usage refers to the use of a word to convey a meaning other than that with which it was originally established. However, in order to justify this division, they must demonstrate that in fact words are established with particular meanings prior to their usage, which is difficult indeed. They then go further to divide literal usage into two types: lughawiyyah, linguistic, and ‘urfiyyah, conventional, though most of them divide it into three types: linguistic, conventional, and shar‘iyyah, legal.

Conventional literal usage refers to words that have come to signify what they do, not by virtue of the language per se, but by virtue of accepted practice or convention. The signification of the word might at times be more general than its strictly linguistic meaning, while at other times it may be more specific. Moreover, the conventional and linguistic meanings may actually be different from one another, although they are related in some manner because of which, the same word was employed to convey two disparate meanings. An example of the first case would be the words “neck,” “head,” and the like—words that were originally employed to refer specifically to a particular member of the body, and that often came to be used to refer to the entire body. The second case pertains to a word like dabbah, a riding animal, such as a horse, mule, or donkey. This word originally was used to refer to any creature that crept along the ground (since the word dabba means to creep or crawl); then it came to be used by some people to refer to animals that walk on four legs and by others to refer specifically to a mare or a donkey. The third case includes words such as gha’it, feces, and za‘inah, riding camel. The word gha’it, for example, in the Arabic language originally referred toa low-lying area where people would go to dispose of bodily wastes; eventually, the same word came to be applied to the bodily wastes themselves, by association with the place where they had “come out.” The word za‘inah was originally used to refer to a riding animal, and specifically a camel for riding, after which people came to apply the same word to the woman who rides on the camel’s back on a

The point to be stressed here is that this type of conventional literal usage did not come into existence because a particular group of people decided to introduce it into the language. Rather, some speakers of the language simply began to use a particular word to convey a meaning that had come to be understood through conventional practice. Through this usage the word then took on this particular meaning as the usage became more widespread. For this reason, the literal usages of many words in a given language have been expanded over time. In fact, a word’s meaning based on conventional usage may come to be more widely recognized than its original linguistic signification, so that when used in an absolute manner, the word evokes not its original meaning, but rather the meaning it has acquired through conventional usage. In such a case, the word’s literal meaning based on convention actually abnegates the meaning it originally conveyed in the language. Moreover, this literal meaning came into being without

LITERAL MEANING AND FIGURATIVE MEANING 109

any establishment of its signification prior to its use; hence, appeal to such a prior establishment of the meanings of words is not valid.

If they say: What we mean by a word’s original coining or creation is that for which it was first used, we would reply by asking: How can one know for certain

that the words that the Arabs were using to communicate with before and at the time the Qur’dn was revealed had not been used previously to convey different meanings? For if they are not certain that such words were not used differently at a previous time, then neither is it possible to know whether they bear a literal meaning, which is in conflict with what they have agreed upon. Moreover, it follows necessarily from this that one can never state with certainty that any given word is being used literally, which no sensible person would accept. We also might find that someone who has taken the above position encounters words that he does not know to have been used in any but a conditioned sense. He then utters them in an entirely absolute sense, then claims that this represents their literal

meanings without knowing that he has stripped them of all restrictions, whereas originally, they had been restricted. For example, one might say that the literal meaning of “eye” is the organ of sight. Following this, the word ‘ayn, eye, might be used in phrases such as ‘ayn al-_shams, the eye of the sun, al-‘ayn al-nabi‘ah, the flowing spring, or ‘ayn al-dhahab, choicest gold, to express some aspect of resemblance or comparison. However, the majority view is to consider this not as an example of literal versus figurative usage but rather of common features among different entities, such that they are likened to one another. The word ra’s, head,

for example, is said to be used literally in the ph rase ra’s al-’insan, the person's head. It may also be used in other phrases with figurative meanings: for example, ra’s al-darb, the head of the road, to mean its beginning; ra’s al-‘ayn, the head of the spring, to mean its source; ra’s al-gawm, the head of the tribe, to mean its chief; ra’s al-’amr, the head of the matter or issue; ra’s al-shahr, ra’s al-hawl, the head of the month or year, to mean their beginnings, and other such phrases through figurative usage. However, one finds nowhere here that the word ra’s, head, is used in isolation, stripped of all restrictions. Rather, it has been used with restrictions, even when it refers to the human head. Allah says: “. . . rub your heads and [wash] your feet up to the ankles . . . (5:6). This restriction prevents other meanings from being read into the word.

Thus if one says, ‘the head of the spring,’ ‘the head of the road,’ ‘the head of the people,’ ‘the head of the matter,’ and so forth, then each restricted phrase is

distinguished from every other one in the overall meaning it conveys. However, all these phrases share a common feature, as do various nouns that are all qualified by the definite article. Moreover, if it is assumed that the speaker utters the phrase ‘the person's head’ first—since one tends to conceptualize his own head before any other type of head, and since one generally expresses first that which he first conceptualized—then the use of this possessive construction initially does not preclude the use of the same word (i.e., head) later in another possessive construction. Nor is this construction a type of figurative usage. If one said, for example, ‘the son of Adam’ first, then later said, ‘the son of the mare’ or ‘the son of the donkey,” this would not necessarily convey figurative meaning. Likewise if we said, ‘the man’s daughter,” we would not be speaking figuratively if we were to say, ‘the mare’s daughter;’ and if we first said, ‘the man’s head,” we would not be engaging in figurative usage if we said, ‘the mare’s head.’ The same would apply to possessive constructions such as “his hand” or “his foot.”

'S Here “the alif” refers to the definite article.

LITERAL MEANING AND FIGURATIVE MEANING 111

back, is called such because it is visible, or easily seen; while a person’s batn al- *insan, stomach, is called thus because it is internal and unseen. Hence if one said: This is literal, and that is figurative, it would make just as much sense to say the opposite. There are also nouns that speakers of a language commonly use in the singular, such as ‘person’ or al-’insan, man. It may also be qualified by a possessive construction, as in the expressions ’insan al-‘ayn, the pupil of the eye, and ’ibrat al-dhira‘, the tip of the arm. And assuming that linguistic usage includes both figurative and literal, some have claimed that the constructions just mentioned are figurative, which is incorrect. For figurative usage refers to the use of a word to convey a meaning other than that with which it was originally associated. Here, however, the word has not been ‘used’ in this manner; rather, it has been compounded with another word, which has placed it in a new association or, one might say, caused a new word to be coined by virtue of the idafah, annexation. Hence, if a word were used in a construct phrase with a particular meaning, then appeared in the same construct phrase with a different meaning, this would indeed be a figurative usage. The place names Ba‘labak and Hadramawt, for example, are both compound words in which two words placed in a construct phrase were combined to create one new word. However, no one says that they represent figurative uses of language. For as long as these names are used solely in a construct phrase, it is more fitting not to consider them figurative uses of a language.