International Journal Of Literature And Languages

Between Decree and The Drawn Sword: Comparative Poetics of Fate, Sanctity, And Heroism in Classical Arabic And Medieval Hebrew Literature, With Methodological Reflections from Andamanese Language Documentation

2026-03-08T16:09:54+00:00

Background: Classical Arabic and medieval Hebrew poetic corpora repeatedly stage a tension between fate (decree, providence, destiny) and human agency (heroism, ethical choice, endurance). At the same time, comparative humanities research faces a methodological problem: how can scholars responsibly interpret cultural meanings—especially around “ultimate” concepts such as decree, redemption, sanctity, and death—without reducing them to a single doctrinal key? This study addresses that problem by reading major Arabic and Hebrew textual witnesses on fate and heroism while also drawing methodological lessons from early ethnographic-linguistic documentation practices in the Andaman Islands, where careful attention to vocabulary, grammar, and contextual usage was treated as foundational to interpretation (Radcliffe-Brown, 1914; Nigam, 1964; Ganguly, 1966).

Methods: The research employs a qualitative comparative approach: (1) thematic mapping of fate/agency and life/death sanctity across selected Arabic texts (Abu Tammām, 1981; Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi, 1986; Ibn Al-Muqaffa, 1934; Altabrizi, 1937; Alhussein, 2019; Al-Mutanabbī, 2008) and Hebrew texts/analyses (Halevy, 1946; Hanagid, 1966, 1985, 1985a, 1993; Ibn Ezra, 1935; Levin, 1962, 1962a, 1964; Elizur, 1994, 2004; Dor, 2015), and (2) methodological triangulation using early Andamanese language records as a cautionary template for interpretive discipline (Radcliffe-Brown, 1914, 1948; Nigam, 1964; Ganguly, 1966).

Results: The analysis finds that (a) “decree” functions less as fatalistic closure than as a poetic instrument for evaluating courage and moral clarity (Alhussein, 2019; Abu Tammām, 1981), (b) the “drawn sword” motif dramatizes redemption and death against the value of life, producing an ethical dialectic rather than a single heroic ideology (Dor, 2015), and (c) medieval Hebrew secular and religious poetics negotiate time, cosmos, and historical crisis through flexible metaphors of flight, suffering, and commandment—often aligning personal agency with divinely framed temporality (Levin, 1962, 1962a, 1964; Elizur, 1994, 2004; Halevy, 1946).

Conclusion: A cross-tradition model emerges: fate is repeatedly “activated” by poetic form—through aphorism, exemplum, lament, praise, and ethical narrative—so that destiny becomes a field of responsibility rather than resignation. Methodologically, the Andamanese documentation record reinforces the necessity of lexical, grammatical, and contextual rigor as a guardrail against interpretive overreach in comparative literary studies (Radcliffe-Brown, 1914; Nigam, 1964; Ganguly, 1966; Radcliffe-Brown, 1948).

The Role of Illocutive Performatives and Deictic Pronouns in The Speech Act of Wishes and Congratulations

2026-03-10T13:16:41+00:00

The following research paper analyzes the role, pragmatic and illocutionary features of illocutionary performatives and deictic pronouns in the speech act of wishes and congratulations. The communicative function of wishes and greetings, their illocutionary purpose, essence, function, the conditions of use of linguistic units and the occurrence of the relationship between the addressee and the addressee in the process of communication are analyzed.

Functional-Pragmatic Features of Verbal Aggression in English And Uzbek

2026-03-10T13:25:58+00:00

This article provides a comprehensive comparative-pragmatic analysis of verbal aggression and face-threatening acts in the English and Uzbek languages. Moving beyond descriptive analyses of affective vocabulary, the study synthesizes classical lexicological and stylistic theories with modern pragmatic frameworks to examine how communicative dominance and manipulation are linguistically encoded. By strictly analyzing the functional-semantic fields, syntactic models, and phraseological units that carry negative evaluative charges, the research highlights the profound linguocultural specificities of the two languages. The findings indicate that English conflict discourse predominantly employs strategies protecting individual autonomy (negative face) through structural indirectness or rigid imperatives. In contrast, the Uzbek language utilizes socially hierarchical, collectivistic models relying on metaphoric transfers and culturally bound optative formulas, aligning with national-cultural pragmatic codes.