News

On November 20, 2019, the Language Research Center hosted a seminar where Dr. Amal Metwally presented her research titled 'Linguistic Markers of Metaphor in the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān towards a Computational Identification', inspired by her Ph.D. thesis.

Research Foundation

In her research, Dr. Metwally sought to establish suitable criteria for the computational identification of metaphors and proposed a computer software that could identify metaphor candidates within the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān. Her work was built upon Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) cognitive theory of metaphor, Goatly's (1997) research on metaphor within the Qur'ān, and broader computational studies of metaphor. Moreover, she drew on early Arab rhetorical and grammatical studies on metaphor.

Selected Sūrahs for Analysis

Dr. Metwally investigated the linguistic markers of potential metaphors, focusing on identifying lexical items likely to be metaphorical. She also explored how these markers could be used to develop a computer application capable of identifying metaphors within selected Sūrahs of the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān, specifically Sūrat Hūd, Sūrat Yūsuf, and Sūrat Ar-Rā'd. In her presentation, she thoroughly explained the chosen corpus, the methodology applied, and the overarching structure of her research. She further clarified the cognitive theory of conceptual metaphor and computational linguistics.

Computational Process

Concluding her study, Dr. Metwally posited that her work opened up a novel direction for computational linguistics research in the realm of metaphor. The development of computer software that could process an entire corpus — in this case, selected Sūrahs from the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān — and produce a list of potential metaphors, was seen as a valuable addition to the current toolkit available to metaphor analysts.

Seminar Participation

The seminar proved to be both highly interactive and a remarkable success. Notably, attendees included individuals from Al-Samer Women's College and the main campus for the Bachelor of Arts in English program, who participated in the seminar via teleconference.