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Journal of Nusantara Studies 2016, Vol 1(2) 11-24
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin
ISSN 0127-9386 (Online)
Journal of Nusantara
Studies (JONUS)
11
CONCEPTUALISATION OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION IN THE HOLY
QURAN: A COGNITIVE-SEMANTIC APPROACH
*1Khan Sardaraz & 2Roslan bin Ali
1&2 Faculty for Language Studies & Commmunication Studies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak,
94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia.
*Corresponding author: sardarazsorani@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Conceptual metaphor is the discursive linguistic strategy employed in the Holy Quran to imprint upon
the human mind the Quranic worldview. This approach can better explain the abstract concepts of
death and resurrection in the Holy Quran through cross domain mapping with human experiential
concepts. Traditional exegetes and rhetoricians missed this phenomenon in the Holy Quran because
of their preoccupation with rhetorical and theological aspects of death and resurrection. The existing
cognitive semantic research has also paid little or no attention to the investigation of death and
resurrection in the Holy Quran. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the conceptual metaphor
themes of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran. Data were retrieved from the Holy Quran on the
basis of key words and phrases encapsulating the abstract concepts of death and resurrection. The
analysis of data reveals various conceptual metaphor themes. It is also found that the data question
the asymmetrical hypothesis of conceptual metaphor theory and its role as a sole model of metaphor
interpretation. This study is part of the growing research on conceptual metaphor in the Holy Quran
and is hoped to contribute to further research on the cognitive semantic analysis of the Holy Quran.
Keywords: cognition, cognitive-semantic, conceptual metaphor, experiential gestalt, Quran,
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Belief in death and life after death is one of cardinal pillars of faith in Islam (Quran 2:4; 4:59;
4:162). Traditional exegetes and rhetoricians missed most of the metaphoric concepts relating
to the death and resurrection in the language of the Holy Quran because they were more
concerned with legal, theological or rhetorical issues in the Holy Quran (Saeed, 2006). These
metaphoric concepts were given literal treatment and thus a bulk of metaphoric concepts
remained unexplored. This was due to the fact that exegetes and rhetoricians followed al-
Jurjani’s (1959) theory of metaphor in search for similarities between different domains using
pragmatic principles. In other words, the focus in traditional exegetical works has been on
resemblance based metaphors. Thus, the traditional school of thought misses the experiential
correlation based metaphors which are pervasive in language and thought (Berrada, 2006).
Moreover, the modern rational legalistic approaches to the Holy Quran have put further curbs
on the rhetorical or linguistic research (Saeed, 2006). Thus, the Holy Quran offers a vast field
for metaphoric linguistic research from diverse perspectives.
No doubt, the resurrection of the dead in the Hereafter has received much attention in the
existing rhetorical tradition (Abdul-Raof, 2000; Fauzia, 2005, 2006; Haleem, 1999; Qutb,
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ISSN 0127-9386 (Online)
12
2004, 1997; Rahman, 2009). Qutb (2004) gives the finest analysis of the pictographic
description of the Hereafter and holds that the aim of these pictographic scenes in the Holy
Quran is the aesthetic appeal which has overwhelmed the believers and unbelievers through
the ages. Death has been termed as gateway to the Hereafter (Quran, 6:61-62). However,
according to Haleem (1999), little has been said about the stage after death in the Holy
Quran. It has been given piecemeal treatment in the existing literature either from the
rhetorical perspective (Qutb, 2004), theological perspective (Aathya, 2001; al-Aasqalani,
1953; al-Zamakhsharī, 1987; Kathir, 1998) or from the philosophical perspective (al-Razi,
1999). It was Asad (1984) who revived the cognitive semantic approach of al-Zamakhshari
(1987) and held that abstract concepts can only be understood in light of concrete experiential
concepts in the Holy Quran. The same stand was demonstrated by Berrada (2006), that
metaphors are conceptual and help in comprehension of abstract concepts.
Death and resurrection are among those concepts which can only be understood if they are
conveyed in more experientially delineated concepts (Asad, 1984). The concepts of death and
resurrection are described in the Holy Quran in the allegorical fashions of sleep, person,
captor, awakening and growth. Therefore, the traditional theory of metaphor would not
suffice to clarify and enable us to comprehend this phenomenon unless conceptual metaphor
theory is applied (Berrada, 2007).
According to cognitive theory of metaphor, metaphor is not a linguistic device. The human
conceptual system is essentially metaphorical and therefore, it is pervasive in our language
and thought (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a). This conceptual system helps in metaphorically
defining abstract concepts in terms of concrete concepts and these concepts are based on
experiential gestalt. Experiential gestalts are schematically structured concepts in the human
conceptual system. Without this experiential basis, the abstract concepts can neither be
represented nor can they be comprehended (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980b). Metaphor is “cross
domains mappings” in our conceptual system (Lakoff, 1993, p. 203). The present study shall
apply the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980a, 1980b,
1980c) to analyse the conceptualisation of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran.
Conceptual metaphor theory has attracted many researchers to investigate the conceptual
metaphor phenomenon in the Holy Quran. Berrada (2002, 2006, 2007) has used this theory to
demonstrate that the Holy Quran uses reification metaphors to express the more abstract
concepts of faith, life after death, light and darkness and punishment. Shokr (2006) has
investigated the conceptual metaphor of ‘moral life is journey’ in the Holy Quran. He holds
that the invariance hypothesis cannot be applied to the religious model. Eweida (2007) has
investigated the conceptualisation of time in the Holy Quran and has found differences in
English and Arabic languages.
Al-Saggaf, Yasin, and Abdullah (2013, 2014) have analysed life, faith, commerce,
containers and soul metaphors in the Holy Quran and found differences in the English
translations by Ali, Pickthall and the Reformist Group. They conclude that the original
Arabic Quran and the translations must be distinguished from each other. Mohammad (2014)
has analysed metaphors of nature modeled on Charteris-Black (2004). He (2004) has
demonstrated that all the metaphors emanate from one basic and key metaphor of ‘natural
phenomenon is a condition for having faith in God’.
The above studies show that death and resurrection have not been investigated so far in the
Holy Quran. In the available literature, only Golzadeh and Pourebrahim (2014) have
investigated death metaphorically and metonymically in the Holy Quran and Nahjul-Balāgha
Journal of Nusantara Studies 2016, Vol 1(2) 11-24
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13
as power. Death is power which controls human beings. But they have also mainly focused
on Nahjul-Balāgha and not on the Holy Quran. Moreover, most of the studies have dealt with
the translations and therefore, it is necessary to locate the conceptual metaphors of death and
resurrection within the original Holy Quran. Therefore, this study shall adopt a methodical
approach to find out all the lexical items which constitute death and resurrection metaphors.
2.0 METHODOLOGY
Data corpus for the research is based on the original Arabic Quran because of the difference
between the experiential correlation of concepts in the Arabic and English language as has
been explored by Eweida (2007), Berrada (2007) and Maleej (2007). However, the English
translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali has been given for each verse for comprehension of non-
Arabic speakers. Data has been collected from the Holy Quran on the basis of key words and
phrases. The roots ‘mīm wāw tā’, ‘wāw fā yā’, ‘nūn wāw mīm’, ‘qāf bā rā’, ‘jīm dāl thā’ and
‘bā ʿayn thā’, have been used for data collection because the lexical items derived from these
roots express the concepts relating to death and resurrection in the Holy Quran. These roots
build the unified theme of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran. The explanation of roots
is given in the next section. The study retrieved the data from the website Islamic city
(2016)
. The retrieved verses were then scrutinised manually and the repeated verses were
deleted. The total number of verses for the analysis was 218.
The data collected was analysed to find out the conceptual metaphor theme of death and
resurrection on the model of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson,
1980a, 1980b, 1980c). Metaphor identification procedure (Group, 2007) has been used to find
out the metaphorically used lexical units in the corpus. This procedure involves manual
reading, determining the lexical unit, determining the meaning of the lexical unit and then if
the contextual meaning differs from basic meaning, it is marking as a metaphor. For this
purpose various dictionaries such as (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Baolbaki, 1995; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane,
1968) have been consulted. This process led to the selection of 46 verses where the lexical
items were marked as metaphors. After the identification of metaphoric linguistic
expressions, the study categorised the conceptualisation of death and resurrection on the basis
of the source domains as suggested in Kövecses (2010) and El-Sharif (2011). The following
example illustrates the mechanism,
The translation
Disputing with thee concerning the truth after it was made manifest, as if they were
being driven to death and they (actually) saw it. (Quran 8:6)
The lexical item ‘yusāqūna' is third person masculine plural passive imperfect verb
derived from the root ‘sīn wāw qāf’ and it literally means ‘drive cattle to water’ (al-Isfahani,
n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). Thus, the contextual meaning differs from the basic
meaning and it is marked as metaphor. Similarly, the lexical item ‘ilā’ is a preposition of
location which has been used with the genitive noun ‘l-mawti’. The noun gets metaphoric
character as a destination to which human beings are driven like cattle. As the basic meanings
of the lexical items differ from the contextual meanings, therefore, the verb ‘yusāqūna' and
1
http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp
Journal of Nusantara Studies 2016, Vol 1(2) 11-24
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14
the noun ‘l-mawti’ are metaphoric. The noun ‘l-mawti’ along-with the preposition ‘ilā’ gives
the conceptual metaphor of death is destination. Death is an event in human life which is
from the domain of time. The concept of time has conceptual correlation with space in the
human conceptual system either as time is an object in bounded space or time is a moving
object in space (See Lakoff, 1993). In traditional exegetical works, the lexical items are
literally interpreted, but the above discussion shows that it has the experiential correlation of
time with space and human behaviour with animal behaviour.
3.0 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
During the analysis of metaphorical words, it has been found that death and resurrection have
been conceptualised through the source domains of personification, human behaviour/
attributes and plants. The main conceptual metaphors found in the corpus are analysed below.
3.1 Death is sleep
Death is metaphysical phenomenon which can only be perceived and realized through some
experiential source domain like sleep. The human knowledge of sleep like inactivity,
inattentiveness, and horizontal shape is used to map death (Lakoff & Turner, 2009). If death
gets the conceptualisation of sleep, resurrection is conceptualised as reawakening from sleep.
This metaphor has been found only in the following verse of the Holy Quran,
The translation: They will say: "Ah! Woe unto us! Who hath raised us up from our beds of repose?
(Quran 36:52)
In this verse, the metaphor is signaled by the lexical items ‘baʿatha’ and ‘marqadinā’. The
lexical item ‘baʿatha’ is from the root ‘bā ʿayn thā’ which embodies the basic concept of
arising, stir, agitation or to remove the restrain from something and hence the verb ‘baʿatha’
means raised, stirred (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). The lexical item
‘marqadi’ is derived from the root ‘rā qāf dāl’ which encapsulates the concept of sleep and
the ‘marqadi’ means sleeping place (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). The verb
with suffixed plural pronoun and the possessive noun with plural pronoun means ‘raised us
up from our sleeping places’. This means that death is sleep, the grave is the sleeping place
and the resurrection is the awakening up from sleep. This linguistic metaphoric expression is
based on death is sleep.
One of hypothesis of the conceptual metaphor theory is that metaphor must abide by the
asymmetrical hypothesis. This means that the mapping must be one directional. The source
domain must map the target domain or sleep must map the death. Contrary to the
Asymmetrical hypothesis of conceptual metaphor theory, this study has also found that sleep
is death. Grady (1999) called this metaphor as metaphor based on resemblance. In the Holy
Quran, such an example has been found in the following verses:
The translation
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“It is He who doth take your souls by night, and hath knowledge of all that ye have
done by day.”
(Quran 6:60)
The translation: “It is Allah that takes the souls (of men) at death; and those that die not (He takes)
during their sleep.
(Quran 39:42)
In these verses, the metaphor sleep is death is signaled by the lexical item ‘yatawaffā’.
This verb has been derived from the root ‘wāw fā yā’. The root embodies the basic perception
of segregation and separation of soul (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). Thus,
literally sleep is the disjunction of the soul from the body. But death is caused by the
separation of the soul from the body and therefore, death has been used as a source domain to
map the concept of sleep. In verses Quran (6:60; 39:42) sleep is considered as death in which
Allah SWT takes away the souls from human beings and when the souls are returned to their
bodies, they are awakened. Sleep is regarded as minor death (Kathir, 1998). According to (al-
Razi, 1999), both sleep and death are from the same domain but the difference is that in sleep
only a few of our senses do not work, while in death all the parts of the body, whether
outward or inward, stop functioning. In Arabic it is usually said “
” “ Sleep is minor death and death is deep sleep” (al-Isfahani, n.d.). There is a difference
between the soul of life and the soul of intellect and in sleep it is the soul of intellect which is
taken, not the soul of life (al-Zamakhsharī, 1987). Thus, Death here is used as a source
domain to explain the sleep. In the sayings of the Holy Prophet, we find the same
conceptualisation.
The translation:
Narrated Hudhaifa: When the Prophet went to bed, he would say "On Thy Name I die
and I rise,” and when he got up he would say: “All praise be to Allah, who gave us
life after our death (sleep is a form of death) and to Him will we be raised and
returned. (al-Bukhari, 1987)
This means that the death is sleep metaphor is based on resemblance as acknowledged by
Grady (1999). If the resemblance based metaphor is acknowledged, it goes against the main
tenets of the conceptual metaphor theory. This means that the asymmetrical hypothesis of the
conceptual metaphor cannot be maintained in novel metaphors or image metaphors.
3.2 Death is person
Knowledge about the human attributes is often used to map the abstract concept by
attributing them to human attributes. Personification helps to conceptualise a large number of
abstract concepts in human terms (Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980b; Lakoff & Turner,
1989). Death as person is the entailment of death is an adversary. This conceptual metaphor
has been found in the following verse of the Holy Quran
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The translation: Ye did indeed wish for death before ye met him: Now ye have seen him with your own
eyes, (And ye flinch!).
(Quran 3:143)
In this verse the verb ‘talqawhu’ signifies the metaphor. It has been derived from the root
‘lām qāf yā’ which means face-to-face meeting between two things or individuals (al-
Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979). Hence the meaning is ‘ye meet him’. The same
conceptualisation is present in the clause ‘ra-aytumūhu’ which means ‘ye have seen it’. Death
has been conceptualised as a person who can be met with and can be seen. Similar mappings
are found in the following verses.
The translation:
Of no effect is the repentance of those who continue to do evil, until death faces one of
them, and he says, "Now have I repented indeed;"
(Quran 4:18)
The translation: Were ye witnesses when death appeared before Jacob?
(Quran 2:133)
…
The translation: It is prescribed, when death approaches any of you, if he leave any goods that he
make a bequest ….
(Quran 2:180)
The translation:
O ye who believe! When death approaches any of you, (take) witnesses among
yourselves when making bequests.
(Quran 5:106)
In all these verses, the metaphor is signaled by the perfect verb ‘hadara’. It has been
derived from the root ‘ḥā ḍād rā’ which means the arrival of a thing or its presence and its
observation (Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). Death is described as an agent which comes to
someone and he sees it. Thus, death is a person which attends upon man. The same
conceptualisation of death as person continues in the following verses,
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The translation: At length, when death approaches one of you, Our angels take his soul, and they
never fail in their duty.
(Quran 6:61)
The translation: (In falsehood will they be) Until, when death comes to one of them, he says: "O my
Lord! send me back (to life)
(Quran 23:99)
In the above verses, the verb ‘jāa’ has been derived from the root ‘jīm yā hamza’. The root
embodies the concept of arrival or coming of something (al-Isfahani, n.d.). The verb ‘jāa’
with the subject ‘al-mawtu’ means that death has come. Thus, death is represented as a
person who comes to a person.
The translation:
In gulps will he sip it, but never will he be near swallowing it down his throat: death
will come to him from every quarter, yet will he not die.
(Quran 14:17)
The translation: and spend something (in charity) out of the substance which We have bestowed on
you, before Death should come to any of you.
(Quran 63:10)
In the above verses, the root of the verb ‘yatī’ is ‘hamza tā yā’ which means to come. The
verb ‘yatī’ means will come (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). Death has been
given the human attribute of coming at ease to someone.
3.3 Death is captor
According to Lakoff and Turner (2009), death is adversary and carries the entailment of death
is captor. Death is captor can be abundantly seen in poetry and everyday language. This
conceptual metaphor has also been investigated by Golzadeh and Pourebrahim (2013) in the
Holy Quran. However their treatment of the metaphor is piecemeal because they have just
given one instantiation of this metaphor in the Holy Quran. The conceptual metaphor of death
is captor has been used in the following verses of the Holy Quran,
The translation:
Say: "Avert death from your own selves, if ye speak the truth."
(Quran 3:168)
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The verb ‘id'raū’ gives metaphoric connotation to the noun ‘l-mawta’. The verb’s root is
‘dāl rā hamza’ which means inclining towards one side, elimination or avert (al-Isfahani,
n.d.; al-Zamakhshari, 1998; Lane, 1968). The verb ‘id'raū’ is imperative and means push
someone back. It shows that death is a captor which cannot be pushed back or averted.
The translation: Wherever ye are, death will find you out, even if ye are in towers built up strong and
high!
(Quran 4:78)
The translation:
Should he die as a refugee from home for Allah and His Messenger, His reward
becomes due
(Quran 4:100)
In these verses, the verb ‘yud'rik’ signals the metaphor of death is captor. Its root is ‘dāl rā
kāf’ which embodies the concept of overtaking something and capturing it (Ibn Fâris, 1979;
Lane, 1968). In both cases, the nominative form of the noun ‘al-mawto’ ‘death’ is
conceptualised as captor who follows and overtakes the prey. The following verses have the
same conceptualisation of death.
The translation:
Say: "Running away will not profit you if ye are running away from death or
slaughter.
(Quran 33:16)
The translation:
Say: "The Death from which ye flee will truly overtake you.
(Quran 62:8)
In these verses, ‘al-firāru’ is the noun while ‘farar’ and ‘tafirrū’ are verbs. These lexical
items are derived from the same root ‘fā rā rā’ which carries the basic concept of appearance,
fleeing, escape and lightness or rashness (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). They
are used with the lexical item ‘mawt’ to conceptualise death as a captor from whom people
flee or run away. But death is a captor from which fleeing is of no avail.
3.4 Death is a fearful being
Knowledge of human emotional status has also been used to personify death as a fearful
being. This is also an entailment of death is a fearful adversary. This conceptual mapping is
found in the following verses:
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The translation:
Didst thou not Turn by vision to those who abandoned their homes, though they were
thousands (In number), for fear of death?
(Quran 2:243)
The translation:
They press their fingers in their ears to keep out the stunning thunder-clap, while they
are in terror of death. (Quran 2:19)
In the above verses, death is personified as an awful being through the use of lexical item
of ‘ḥadhara’ with ‘mawt’. The lexical item ‘ḥadhara’ is derived from the root ‘ḥā dhāl rā’
which enfolds the basic perception of wary or in fear of something dreadful (al-Isfahani, n.d.;
Ibn Fâris, 1979; Lane, 1968). Death is an awful being which causes fear.
3.5 Death and life are creatures
Death has been conceptualised as a living being created by Allah SWT. Death gets
personified as a living creature to test human beings with it. This metaphor is found in the
following verse.
The translation:
He Who created Death and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed.
(Quran 67:2)
The verb ‘khalaqa’ signals the metaphor in this verse. It is derived from the root ‘khā lām
qāf’ and means the act of measuring to create something (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979;
Lane, 1968). When it comes with the abstract concept of death, it means that ‘who created
death’. Thus, death gets personification as death is a living creature.
3.6 Undergoing death is tasting it
According to Sweetser (1991) the vocabulary of physical perception is linked with internal
emotions. It makes the basis of conceptual metaphor mind is body. Undergoing experience is
tasting it is one of those metaphors derived from it. Death is also an experience which has
been mapped with tasting in the following verses:
The translation: Every soul shall have a taste of death.
(Quran 3:185), (Quran 21:35), (Quran 29:57)
The translation:
Nor will they there taste death, except the first death;
(Quran 44:56)
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The translation:
In that case We should have made thee taste an equal portion (of punishment) in this
life, and an equal portion in death.
(Quran 17:75)
In the above verses, the active participle ‘dhāiqatu’, the verbs ‘yadhūqūna’ and ‘adhaq’
are derived from the root ‘dhāl wāw qāf’. The root embodies the concept of the taste or trial
of something for the purpose of taste (al-Isfahani, n.d.; Ibn Fâris, 1979). It has been used with
the noun ‘al-mawti’ to map death as tasting. The perceptual experience of food has been used
to map the experience of death. The source domain of taste has been used to map the
experience of death in the above verses.
3.7 Resurrection is growth
This metaphor is based on people are plants and mother earth (Hogan, 2011). Resurrection
has been explained through the source domain of rebirth from the earth in the Holy Quran.
Resurrection is the target domain which humans cannot grasp without its elucidation through
some experientially delineated source domain of growth. Such mappings can be found in
several verses, such as Quran (7:57), Quran (16:65), Quran (22:05), Quran (30:24), Quran
(30:50), Quran (35:09), Quran (43:11), Quran (45:05), Quran (50:11) and Quran (57:17). In
most of these cases analogy has been used to describe resurrection as the growth of the dead
earth after rain.
The translation:
when they have carried the heavy-laden clouds, We drive them to a land that is dead,
make rain to descend thereon, and produce every kind of harvest therewith: thus shall
We raise up the dead: perchance ye may remember.
(Quran 7:57)
The translation:
And among His Signs in this: thou seest the earth barren and desolate; but when We
send down rain to it, it is stirred to life and yields increase. Truly, He Who gives life
to the (dead) earth can surely give life to (men) who are dead.
(Quran 41:39)
…
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The translation:
O mankind! if ye have a doubt about the Resurrection, …. and (further), thou seest the
earth barren and lifeless, but when We pour down rain on it, it is stirred (to life), it
swells, and it puts forth every kind of beautiful growth (in pairs).
(Quran 22:5)
In this verse, the target domain is resurrection while the source domain is growth from the
earth. People will be resurrected on the day of judgement as seeds are sprouted and grow
when the earth is watered. People are plants sown in the dead earth after death and awaiting
rebirth on the day of resurrection after the earth is watered. Hence resurrection is growth from
the mother earth.
4.0 DISCUSSION
The findings reveal that most of the metaphoric concepts investigated in this study have been
given literal treatment in the exegetical literature. However, they reveal a deep correlation of
concepts in the human conceptual system and it has been used as one of the discursive
devices in the Holy Quran to inscribe on the human psychology the truth of the otherwise
elusive concepts. Conceptual metaphor theory gives new dimensions to the abstract concepts
of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran which can further be extended to other themes
and concepts in the Holy Quran for robust linguistic metaphoric research.
The analysis shows that the target domain of death has been explained through various
source domains taken from ordinary life. All these source domains owe their origin to the
primary source domain of the great chain of being. Death has either been personified or has
been explained as human activity while resurrection has mainly been explained through
detailed analogies deriving its structure from the basic metaphor of mother earth. The
analysis shows that some of the basic hypothesis of conceptual metaphor cannot be proven in
all metaphors. As acknowledged by Grady (1999), the resemblance based metaphors violate
the directionality hypothesis of the conceptual metaphor. This study has also found that as in
English, in Arabic language death and sleep can serve as a source domain for each other.
Thus, though this study on the existing research on the Holy Quran and conceptual metaphor
tradition, it also questions the directionality principle of conceptual metaphor theory.
The most important finding which this study has shown is that the conceptual metaphor
often resides at the level of the root meaning of the lexical items. This means that roots enfold
the most salient meanings of lexical items. The Arabic roots have been called the repository
of Arabic concepts (Ibn Fâris, 1979; Ryding, 2005). Therefore, the conventional metaphoric
expressions are understood automatically. This is also the reason that the language of the
Holy Quran is quite easy to understand. Abdelaal and Kaigama (2015) also argue that
conceptual metaphor clarifies the eschatological concepts but this study has revealed the
basic reason for this simplicity which may further be researched in future studies.
However, the basic roots give only the generalised overview of the concepts and the
conceptual metaphor gives merely a relational structure to the linguistic metaphoric
expression. Interpretation depends not only upon the root meanings but also upon the form of
the lexical item, its relational structure with other lexical items and the intended
communicative context. This is the reason that Berrada (2007) calls for extensive pragmatic
principles in the interpretation of the Holy Quran. The position can be explained by
examining one metaphoric expression such as undergoing death is tasting it.
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The lexical item ‘dhāiqatu’ means having a taste of something. But death cannot literally
have a taste. Therefore, such meaning becomes anomalous. Therefore, further meanings of
the lexical items are to be searched for. The lexical item may have meanings of taste, relish,
gusto, inclination, liking, perception and experience (Lane, 1968). The lexical concept ‘al-
mawti’ carries the semantic potential of death, demise, nothingness, senseless, sleep, stupor
(Baolbaki, 1995; Lane, 1968). When the lexical concept ‘dhāiqatu’ combines ‘al-mawti’, it
means the perception of the pangs of death and not merely the tasting. It shows that
conceptual metaphor theory offers systematic categorisation of concepts in the Holy Quran,
interpretation of religious discourse such as the Holy Quran needs both conceptual metaphor
and language (El-Sharif, 2016). Thus, this study reveals that conceptual metaphor theory
offers a comprehensive approach to metaphoric research in the Holy Quran, it cannot reveal
the interrelationship between language, experiences and conceptual system which offers a
vibrant field for future metaphoric research in the Holy Quran.
5.0 CONCLUSION
This study reveals that conceptual metaphor theory offers a comprehensive approach to
investigate the conventional metaphors in the Holy Quran which have been missed in the
existing exegetical literature. This model also gives systematic categorisation of concepts in
the Holy Quran which will further enliven interest in linguistic and conceptual research in the
Holy Quran. This study shows that the abstract concepts of death and resurrection are
explained through the experiential gestalts of human attributes and behaviour, human
activities, human perceptual experiences and growth. These experiential gestalts give
systematic structure to the abstract concepts of death and resurrection which are missing in
the existing exegetical and rhetorical literature. However, this study reveals that neither the
asymmetrical hypothesis of conceptual metaphor theory nor its role as comprehensive model
for metaphor interpretation is tenable. However, this study has investigated conceptual
metaphor in a piecemeal manner and therefore, it necessitates further studies to examine the
nature and function of both linguistic knowledge and conceptual knowledge in metaphor
interpretation of the Holy Quran.
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