Mustansiriyah Journal of Arts

Religious sacredness is considered one of the most prominent phenomena in human life, and it constitutes a noticeable presence in religious and secular thought. The sacred rituals and the accompanying values are an embodiment of religious sacredness, as religious rituals inherently carry a tendency towards sanctification in their practical reality. Iraqi short stories have been rich with examples that dealt with religious sacredness in all its forms. In this research, we focused on the sacred religious rituals and values that are a reflection or explicit expression of the supreme value of the sacred in short story creation and, before that, in human thought.

There is an intimate connection between poetry and vision in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry; for a poem cannot be a great achievement unless it carries the human vision and its quest to dismantle the existing reality in favor of a possible one. Vision can be considered an act of transcendence in pre-Islamic poetry beyond what is collectively perceived, through the self's revelation of the invisible relationships between the scenery and the subjective vision carried by the poem. On the other hand, poetic vision in pre-Islamic poetry attempts to question reality according to the self's perceptions and intellectual beliefs that define the nature of these relationships with beings and things. Existence becomes a stage for the creative interaction between the self and poetic utterance, making the poem a parallel world that the poet inhabits to fulfill his self within the poetic structure. This is what makes pre-Islamic poetry a timeless and spaceless poetic text, shaping the collective unconscious.

In the history of literature, there are many creators who have provided, through the human literary method, various types of creativity. Only poets are the most prominent of those creators, and their poetic productions have been a source of admiration and amazement. These people have achieved fame and knowledge, which has made their names and achievements the headlines of many good studies. However, at the same time, there are some of those... Creative people have been forgotten by history and have not received their due fame. The ongoing studies of this work are an attempt to revive the memory of a forgotten poet, the poet Khaddar Al-Take.

Phonology is a branch of phonetic research devoted primarily to the study of phonemes and their problems. Phonological study deals with the phonetic phenomena of linguistic sounds in different contexts (syntactic phonetic changes), such as assimilation, inversion, concealment, contrast, and substitution. The field of phonological study includes performance phenomena such as stress, intonation, phonetic coloring, pause, rhythm, and others. The importance of the research lies in confirming the fact that Arab scholars know phonological phonetic studies and their awareness of their impact on linguistic research. The views of Orientalists differed regarding the reality of phonological research in the linguistic study of ancient Arabs. Some Orientalists denied the existence of this type of study in the writings of ancient Arab scholars, while others confirmed the knowledge of Arab scholars of phonological studies, such as stress, syllable, intonation, and others within the field of phonology.

The manifestations of grammatical industry were present among Arabic grammarians since its first emergence, and they are still valid in the same method. Al-Rassas was very keen on interpreting texts and expressing meanings in a precise manner that is consistent with the grammatical rule. In view of this phenomenon and its status among Arab grammarians, the research sheds light on one of its most important aspects, which is grammatical reasoning. Al-Rassas combined the causes of grammatical issues, providing many of them with explanations and clarifications.

This research aims to reveal Quṭrub's (d. after 214 AH) interpretation of the phenomenon of Masculinity and Femininity (Tadhkīr wa Ta'nīth) in the Arabic language as represented in the Holy Qur'an, its various Quranic readings (Qirā'āt), and Arabic dialects. It seeks to clarify the rationales (Ta'līlāt) and justifications he provided for this phenomenon, and to identify the criteria and controls he adopted in his explanations and interpretations. Furthermore, the study compares his rationales and justifications with those proposed by other Arab linguists, to determine if he agreed or disagreed with them, and whether he was a precursor or a follower in his explanations.
The study employed the Inductive-Analytical Methodology, achieved by surveying this phenomenon among Arab linguists in general and Quṭrub in particular, collecting their statements, and analyzing them with the linguistic tools available. The study is divided into an introduction and two chapters:
The Introduction discusses the extent of attention given by Arab linguists to the phenomenon of Masculinity and Femininity, which of the two (Masculinity or Femininity) is the origin, whether they have distinguishing signs, the concept of Masculinity and the concept of Femininity, and whether they This research aims to reveal Quṭrub's (d. after 214 AH) interpretation of the phenomenon of Masculinity and Femininity (Tadhkīr wa Ta'nīth) in the Arabic language as represented in the Holy Qur'an, its various Quranic readings (Qirā'āt), and Arabic dialects. It seeks to clarify the rationales (Ta'līlāt) and justifications he provided for this phenomenon, and to identify the criteria and controls he adopted in his explanations and interpretations. Furthermore, the study compares his rationales and justifications with those proposed by other Arab linguists, to determine if he agreed or disagreed with them, and whether he was a precursor or a follower in his explanations.
The study employed the Inductive-Analytical Methodology, achieved by surveying this phenomenon among Arab linguists in general and Quṭrub in particular, collecting their statements, and analyzing them with the linguistic tools available. The study is divided into an introduction and two chapters:
The Introduction discusses the extent of attention given by Arab linguists to the phenomenon of Masculinity and Femininity, which of the two (Masculinity or Femininity) is the origin, whether they have distinguishing signs, the concept of Masculinity and the concept of Femininity, and whether they have classifications.
The First Chapter focuses on the masculinization of certain terms in the Holy Qur'an, tracing the rationales provided by Arab linguists, especially Quṭrub, for this masculinization.
The Second Chapter focuses on the feminization of certain terms in the Holy Qur'an and its readings, tracing the rationales provided by Arab linguists, particularly Quṭrub, for this feminization.
The research concludes with the most prominent findings and sources.

Friendship is one of the themes that has received wide attention in Arabic poetry. Al-Sharif al-Murtada (355 AH – 436 AH) is regarded as one of the prominent scholars, philosophers, and literary figures of the Abbasid era. He was known for his vast knowledge and high standing in jurisprudence, theology, and literature. Friendship occupied a significant space in his poetry, reflecting its importance in both his personal life and intellectual worldview. Al-Sharif al-Murtada presents a philosophical and rational view of friendship, portraying it as a relationship grounded in pure affection and free from self-interest and ego. He was able to distinguish between a true friend and a pretender, asserting that genuine friendship is rare and can only be tested in times of hardship and crisis. This perspective reflects his life experience and intellectual depth. At times, he expresses disappointment at the shrinking circle of loyal friends; at other times, he views friendship as an honest human bond based on loyalty, truthfulness, and sincerity. Through the above, Kprofound understanding of the value of friendship and female friendship, observing its transformations in light of personal experience and social context. He has been able to give these concepts a human and philosophical dimension that transcends the familiar in traditional poetry. This made him one of the most distinguished voices in this field. In addition, the language and style of his poetry in this area were characterized by emotional honesty, high eloquence, and the occasional use of symbolism. His style was also characterized by wisdom and admonition, with a sad or critical tone.

tushakil almawruth liltawasul 'iilaa tanawue dilalatih waikhtilaf masadirih msdanraan 'ilhamyaan wmhwraan likathir min almaeani walmadamin almushtarak bayn alnaas aladhin aistawhaha alshaaeir almueasir linafadh alnafadh eabraha litaswir mueanaatih waltaebir ean qadayah wakhatawatih waeamiqat, wyeud alnasu alquraniu masdar hamaan min masadir altaebir ean alshery watakthif aldalalat watharayiha bialrumuz alkhumasiati, faqad tama alhusul ealaa shueara' aljiraan alkarim, 'iidh aistathmarat alshueara' thaqafatahum. aleaqidat bshshta alturuq alati takhusuhum waruyatihim

Time is one of the most important elements of narrative structure, as it contributes to defining the event in literary texts and clarifying the nature of the event for the recipient. It is important to note that the presence of time differs in prose and poetry, as does the presence of other narrative elements. This is due to the nature of poetry, which tends toward brevity and condensation in conveying events, unlike prose, which requires detailed narration and precise time. The nature of time in Abbasid poetry varies from one poet to another, depending on the nature of the news being conveyed. These stories cannot be separated from the temporal structure, which is an essential element in accurately and explicitly explaining events. News stories are not narrated arbitrarily without a specific time frame that gives them a real existence and a realistic character. The temporal structure in Abbasid poetry has taken two approaches: the first is a temporal structure based on indirect statements (psychological time), while the second is a temporal structure based on direct statements (real time). This study will examine the stories conveyed in Abbasid poetry according to the structure of the time stated indirectly and the structure of the time stated directly.

This study explores the representations of the rural imaginary in modern Arabic poetry, using the collection Rain Song (Unshūdat al-Maṭar) as a case study. The research begins by examining the concepts of the imaginary, consciousness, and imagination, distinguishing between imagination (al-mukhayyila) and the imaginary (al-mikhyāl), and presenting various definitions of both terms. It also addresses the relationship between consciousness and art, the hypotheses of symbolic unconscious formation, and how the agricultural environment influences literary and artistic forms. The study investigates how individuals shaped by such an environment perceive the world and formulates the interrelations between the elements constituting literature from the perspective of rural communities.

This research deals with the place (fencing) with a multiple Interference of wide -minded sciences, after it was born in a logical, mental space, which means inventory and identification (quantitative or qualitative) for the sentence of members of the subject or how it is formed, taking from the Holy Qur’an a field to search in a number of its verses as a researcher in which its evidence, and the aesthetic of its formats in it, as well Al -Bath lo tomó como un recurso para mostrar sus decisiones a través del espacio de la declaración árabe y el método de metáfora, y la efectividad de la interpretación en su revelación, a través de la importancia de que el cercado constituye dentro del marco de su espacio, demostrar que el cercado es una característica clara en los sistemas del Corán a través de las estructuras de sus honorables versos, dentro del marco de las herramientas y el estilo, a través de las ventanas (Greamic).
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The theory of Speech Acts, also known as Pragmatics, is a philosophical theory that concerns itself with language and its functions, explaining how language relates to the objective world and highlighting the functional nature of language. This theory places language within the context of human action and explores the functions and goals of human action realized through sentences. The story of Prophet Joseph (Yusuf), peace be upon him, mentioned in the Holy Quran as "the best of stories," is a beautiful and eloquent narrative about his life, presented in the twelfth Surah of the Holy Quran under the same name. In this story, Allah Almighty mentioned fundamental concepts such as reliance on God (Tawakkul), infallibility (Ismah), and patience (Sabr), which are clearly manifested in the events of the Quranic narrative. This research aims to illustrate how Speech Acts manifest in the dialogues of the characters in the story of Joseph (peace be upon him). In this study, the Speech Acts in the story of Joseph (peace be upon him) were analyzed, such as Declarative (Representational), Persuasive (Directive), Commissive (Phatic), and Expressive Acts, with a focus on their impact within the pragmatic context. The research also aims to analyze the Speech Acts in the story of Joseph (peace be upon him), examine their frequency, and clarify the impact of the context and the characters' psychological and social circumstances on the nature of their discourse. The research followed a descriptive-analytical methodology to understand the nature of the speech acts in their various contexts. The results revealed that the characters in the story of Joseph (peace be upon him) relied mainly on the Declarative Act in their dialogues, followed by the Persuasive Act to a lesser extent. Furthermore, the Declarative Act had the lowest rate of repetition in this story. The social status and psychological dimension of the characters had a direct impact on the type of their speech acts. The actions related to each speech act used in the characters' discourses vary according to the social status of the speaker and the audience, and sometimes they are contradictory to one another.

The novel is one of the narrative forms that have not known stability; it was and still is a fertile field for academic research, attracting the attention of writers, critics, and readers alike, leading to a diversity in its authors and its scholars. Time is considered one of its most crucial constitutive elements, serving as the framework upon which the building and development of events proceed. Time is a category with multiple manifestations and different functions. Perhaps this is what led us to embrace the value of time in the novel, resulting in our research titled: "The Anachronism in the Novel 'A City Outside of Time' by Talib Omran." Omran succeeded in manipulating the element of time extensively using various narrative techniques, leaping from the omniscient voice to the subjective voice. This approach makes his novel rich with temporal density and a distinct narrative language, breaking the traditional fabric of narration, and thus presenting an unconventional narrative experience that transcends mere storytelling into a realm of contemplation on time, humanity, and history.

The plural forms in Arabic represent one of the most prominent aspects of its morphological and semantic richness. They include sound plurals (masculine and feminine) as well as the various patterns of broken plurals, in addition to the distinction between plurals of paucity and plurals of abundance. This diversity reflects the language’s ability to convey meanings with precision, as the different patterns play a significant role in expressing number, inclusiveness, exaggeration, or emphasis. The study of these forms reveals a systematic morphological structure that connects form to meaning, highlighting the flexibility of Arabic and its capacity to accommodate semantic shifts across time. Therefore, research on Arabic plural forms is essential, as it provides a key to understanding the morphological and semantic structure of Arabic texts, both classical and modern.

The cumulative nature of verbs is not limited to morphological or syntactic repetition, but extends to the level of temporal and semantic transformation. The succession of verbs within a verse creates an escalating internal movement, charging the text with rhetorical energy that enables it to touch the conscience and express successive psychological or eventual transformations. This cumulative nature also contributes to creating an internal rhythm that harmonizes with the external rhythm of the poetic meter, giving the text musical richness and semantic dynamism. It has become striking in Arabic poetry, both ancient and modern, that this phenomenon is deliberately employed to generate a state of kinetic and emotional intensity.
Successive verbs are often used to denote continuity, temporal accumulation, or even the gradual collapse of feeling or meaning. Hence, the importance of studying and analyzing this phenomenon, especially given the scarcity of focused academic treatment of it as an independent stylistic structure within poetic texts. From this perspective, this research seeks to study the phenomenon of cumulative verbs as a rhetorical mechanism based on grammatical and semantic functions.
It also aims to analyze their impact on the construction of poetic imagery and determine their rhythmic and semantic value within the poetic context, through analytical applications on selected examples of Arabic poetry.

Hate speech is that speech which incorporates expressions that instigate people to hate targeted parties and incite them to act violently against them based on some inherent attributes such as ethnicity, religion, race, etc. Hate speech is internationally and legislatively prohibited because it intimidates social peace, leads to social segregation, and fuels international conflicts. Drawing on Leech and Short’s checklist of linguistic and stylistic categories (2007), Grice’s four conversational maxims (1989), and Joos’ scale of formality (1962), this paper is an attempt to examine hate speech about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The dataset that is wholeheartedly pragmatically analyzed is the posts of selected influential accounts on X.com. The ultimate aim of this study is to examine the hate speech functions such influencers aim at in their posts. The hate speech that influencers target in their posts is found to have uncharted inconsistency in hate speech research. For obtaining comprehensive results, a sequential explanatory mixed method is used. The results reveal that X.com influencers put much focus on some hate speech functions such as inciting people to violence, dehumanizing and demonizing people, and reinforcing in-group identity. These influencers zoom in on using an intimate and casual style of formality in their posts to suit their readers’ mentalities.

This paper aims to discuss the concept of interest convergence in Angie Thomas' novel The Hate U Give (2017) under the scope of Critical Race Theory. This concept is introduced by the eminent scholar Derrick Bell, who proposed that advancements in racial justice take place when they agree with the interests of dominant groups. By applying this concept, the study explores how the novel depicts systemic racism, police brutality, and social activism in contemporary America. The protagonist, Starr Carter, goes through a white private school and her own Black community, which exposes her to the intersections of race, privilege, and activism. The study emphasizes how the events of the novel, especially the event of the community's response to Khalil's death, reveal moments in which Black struggles for justice side with the wider social or institutional interests. Moreover, it criticizes the challenges of interest convergence in achieving equity. The study sheds light on the role of literature in general and Young Adult Fiction in particular in demonstrating systemic inequities and the different ways concerning the issues of achieving social justice.

This paper examines Sinan Antoon’s novel The Corpse Washer through the lens of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the divided subject, as articulated in his theory of identity formation. Lacan claims that a divided identity is revealed in dreams, occurring when the individual’s identity is fragmented within the process of identity formation. The study argues that the recurring dreams experienced by the protagonist, Jawad, particularly those involving his father, his artistic aspirations, and his disturbing nightmares, reflect the split subject marked by lack and unfulfilled desires. Crucially, this Lacanian lack becomes a motivating force for his desire to migrate and emerges as a central expression of his internal conflict. These dreams are not random but saturated with symbolic signifiers that function as metaphors for an unstable self. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how Jawad’s dreams reveal the instability of his identity and how Antoon’s narrative captures the psychological consequences of this fragmentation, especially his tendency toward indecision

This paper presents two plays by Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1953) and The American Clock (1980), as political plays that can be used as a source of social and political criticism. The Crucible is set during the Salem witch trials of 1692 and is allegorical of the atmosphere of fear, hysteria, and ideological persecution in the middle of the twentieth century, namely McCarthyism. The American Clock, on the contrary, is a satirical reflection on the system breakdown of capitalism and the disintegration of social order. The paper applies the speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1975), as a complementary theory to the pragmatic stylistics, to analyze these plays. The themes of power, morality, and resistance are the themes where analysis will be conducted on how Miller employs assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations as negotiation measures. Findings show that such claims as the ones made about mass hysteria intensify it, and that directives epitomise a manifestation of hierarchical authority in The Crucible. Expressives are stressed in The American Clock to narrate the emotional responses of economic misery, commissives to narrate the unkept capitalist promises. Combining both the pragmatic and stylistic analysis, the paper shows how the language of Miller is not only a weapon of dramatic tension, but also of linguistic resistance and political comment. The mixed methodology is a contribution to the broader stylistic analysis in that it will show how literary conversation can be socially active and that it is also parodic of repressive structures simultaneously.

In an era characterized by the movement of global cultures, the process of forming identity evolves into a flexible and dynamic phenomenon instead of a stable one. This research investigates how transcultural exchanges affect identity in modern immigrant novels: White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Utilizing Stuart Hall's framework that views identity as a fluid construct shaped by cultural and social interactions, this study analyzes how immigrant protagonists forge identities that reflect both their heritage and the varied, often-mixed cultures they navigate. The findings enhance the comprehension of immigrant literature, illustrating that identities are complex, influenced by both local and global dynamics, and continually reshaped by new cultural encounters. By incorporating Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “Third Space” and Arjun Appadurai’s theory of global cultural flows, the research offers a refined understanding of identity as a product of cultural interactivity rather than a fixed attribute tied to ethnicity or background.

Objectives: The current study tries to dispute the premise that modern autobiographical writings by Turkish citizens living outside Turkey promote a universalizing, dehumanizing, and hegemonic picture of the nation. The main objective is to investigate the complexities of subjectivity and the formation of identities of Shafak's characters through Lacan's conceptions of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.
Methods: This study adopts Lacan's subjectivity to analyze the progression of the main characters in Shafak's novel as a response to the prevailing conflicts between various psychological and societal realms.
Results: The study shows that unconscious conflicts from various psychological orders consistently trap Binnaz and Humeyra. Leila and Osman can reaffirm their subjectivity while simultaneously infiltrating the symbolic order.
Conclusions: The current study states that Elif Shafak's novel presents a character depiction that rejects the notion of permanent identities and shows characters with various and nuanced subjectivities. This concept is in contrast to the conventional conception of fixed identities.

This research paper investigates English and Arabic movie titles from a stylistic perspective. The aim is to reveal the linguistic and cultural mechanisms that are responsible for the construction and reception of the titles. It analyzes important movie titles in the Western and Arabic cinemas as a corpus of study. This research analyzes English and Arabic titles regarding structure, meaning, and culture. It also studies the use of titles in both languages, like names of books, articles, movies, etc. The research paper’s findings show how stories and audience expectations from different cultures gave rise to different literary devices. Concise and straightforward English titles are preferred. Puns and wordplay are often included as well. Arabic titles, on the other hand, are culturally and literarily grounded and metaphorical. The cultural expectations of the audiences for a particular language can be observed in the contrast between the two. In the conclusion, it is pointed out that film titles are not linguistic constructs but the cultural contexts that assist in engaging with the cinematic content. The study's implications for cross-cultural film marketing and the translation of movie titles are discussed.

This study is an investigation and analysis of conceptual metaphors in Ted Hughes’s and Nizar Qabbani’s poems within the theoretical framework of Lakoff and Johnson (2003), Kovecses (2020). The two poets are regarded as two of the most important poets of modern literature in the 20th century. Hughes’s selected poem is (Song) and Qabbani’s poem is (Your body is my map) as they are chosen for their relation to the study's theme. The study is primarily conducted using descriptive research and documentary analysis, with a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the process of analysis, the researcher attempts to find out the metaphoric and metaphtonymic expressions of love and pain in the selected poems of both poets. Four levels are used in the analysis: image schema, which looks at the embodied and underlying structures of metaphors; domain level, which charts the relationship between the source and target domains; frame level, which places the metaphor in a larger cultural context; and mental space level, which looks into how the reader constructs love and pain through poetic imagery. The final section compares the levels of analysis based on the quantitative analysis and provides answers to the research questions of the study

A bilingual is described as an individual who "knows" two languages according to Valdez & Figueora (1994). Simultaneous interpreters denote those highly skilled bilinguals who help to mediate or communicate between different languages. Given that bilingual individuals deal with two languages concurrently, bilinguals are believed to function as adequately and fluently as simultaneous interpreters. The results show that bilinguals could hardly replace simultaneous interpreters unless they develop specific linguistic, cognitive skills, and competences undergoing intensive practicing in order to provide a fulfilling production. This study tackles the differences between simultaneous interpreters and bilinguals in order to prove whether bilinguals can replace simultaneous interpreters in most situations.