Meaning compositionality in the text of “Iram-a Dhāt Al-Imād” (Iram- Who Had Lofty Pillars) by Gibran Khalil Gibran in the light of the theory of mental spaces

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Arabic Language Department, College of Arts, King Faisal University, Alahsa, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This research aims to examine the play of “Iram-a Dhāt Al-Imād” (Iram- who had lofty pillars) by Gibran Khalil Gibran in the light of the theory of the mental spaces by Gilles Fauconnier, which is one of the theories branching from cognitive linguistics, as this theory allows the interpretation of speech by researching how the meaning composes through similar components, elements, roles and relationships between these. The play of “Iram-a Dhāt Al-Imād” (Iram- who had lofty pillars) by Gibran Khalil Gibran is subject to cognitive processes and mental mechanisms, which make imagination possible and facilitate the process of understanding and interpretation. Gibran has utilized cultural clues to establish mental spaces built of hypothetical ones to reach his target, as the city of Iram-a Dhāt Al-Imād represents an integrated framework through descriptions and characteristics that are established by culture, which leads to the creation of multiple mental representations, and to the formation of a consistent cognitive structure, a theory that has helped in exploring how meaning is composed and characters are portrayed by the knowledge established in the writer’s and the recipient’s minds. We concluded that these spaces refer to a mystical, existential philosophy that appears in the text and gets formed through its chain of compositionality, and that every space triggered by another one was a target through the principle of conversion, so the spaces in this text were generated in a purposeful and logical manner and interconnected intellectually and structurally.

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