Recodification of Gestures in Early Arabic Spoken Discourse Intralingually and Interlingually
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1308.13Keywords:
corpus-based semiotics, gestures, intersemiotic translation, orality vs. written communication, communication recodificationAbstract
This paper explores the symbolic values of gestures in early Arab discourse. The Prophet’s traditions are selected for analysis because they are the most canonical Islamic texts after the Qur’an. The paper analyzes the implications of the Prophet’s gestures as his traditions were related orally before they were recorded in scrolls later. Therefore, we can examine how these semiotic gestures are interpreted in the Arabic script as situated in the early oral culture and how they are codified or recodified intralingually, using corpus linguistics techniques. Findings show that the semiotic cues used by early generations should be situated in their original culture and re-codified to later generations for monolingual and cross-lingual communication. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of gestures in early Arabic discourse and provides insights into how they are recodified for different contexts and languages.
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