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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Two Main Linguistic and Semantic Approach in Islamic Theologoical Tradition
Author(s)
Ibrahim BOR
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DOI:10.17265/2160-6579/2015.11.003
Affiliation(s)
Mardin Artuklu University, Mardin, Turkey
ABSTRACT
Theology is one of the main areas in which linguistics and semantics take up a significant space. The same issue also appears in the Islamic theological works known “kalam”. There are two main semantical approaches regarding the theological doctrines in the Islamic thought. However the theological reasons are the primary aims in these semantical works, but they include serious philosophical and linguistic content. One of them is the main Islamic strand (orthodox Islam) represented by some astonishing Islamic scholars such as Ici, Guwaini, Şahristani, Ghazali, and Razi. According to this tradition, meaning is an inner state and a state of mind which is specified by the intent of the interlocutor or the author. The utterances have only an instrumentel role in speech. This approach can also be compared to the primary semantic view ranging from Aristotele to P. Grice—with some variations in the Western philosophical tradition. The second thesis is argued by the Mu'tazili sect who are called Islamic rationalists that objected to Ahl us-Sunnah in their prominent ideas. From Mu'tazila‟s point of view meaning should only be looked for among linguistic facts. There is no intentional content in the mind before the utterances. Meaning is produced within the structure of language itself and the conventional social context. In other words, meaning is nothing but the usage of the language. These two approaches also mean that there is going to arise different forms of interpretation in the theological perception. The aforementioned approach carries similarities with the approaches of Western thinkers like Wittgenstein and his followers. In this paper, the author deal with these two theological approaches by focusing on their linguistic and semantic views and comparing them with some modern western theories.
KEYWORDS
semantic approach, inner/mental meaning, utterance, Ahl us-Sunnah, Mu'tazila
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