Presented by Rachel Friedman.

Discourse about language figures prominently in the classical Arabo-Islamic tradition. Scholars in the 9th and 10th centuries CE developed a robust body of thought on a set of interrelated topics that include the properties of language, the means by which it signifies, and its origins. One of the principal foci of these discussions of language was the Qur’an, with attention to means of understanding its content, its literary form, and its ontological status as a communication from the divine through the medium of language. This talk will engage with the work of three key figures in this tradition—al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868), Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 1013), and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jurjānī (d. 1078)—to examine ways in which the classical Arabo-Islamic tradition theorized language, its power to signify, and its power to provoke emotion. It will show how discourse on Qur’anic language was a site of theorizing language and signification more broadly and discuss the ways that the focus on divine speech shaped classical Arabo-Islamic theories of language.