This dissertation examines the contemporary social function of Malian jelis (‘griots’), arguing that material compensation and caste status are essential to a signifying practice with profound continuing relevance. As Mande society's hereditary “masters of the word,” jelis entra…
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Metaphors raise several problems for semantic theory and the philosophy of language. How, for example, is metaphorical language distinguished from literal language? Do metaphors have a linguistic or semantic meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words? Are metaphors either t…
This study is the first to examine the potential moderating effects of positive and negative religious coping, trait forgiveness, and meaning in military duties on the identified link between combat exposure and subsequent symptoms of generalized psychological distress and postt…
This study examines the relationship between sound and meaning in medieval Arabic linguistic theory, with particular attention given to the work of Ibn Jinni. The historical background of discussions of the relationship between sound and meaning in the Arabic linguistic traditio…
The opening chapters of Islamic legal theory manuals offer extended discussions of the language of the Qur'an, and principles for its interpretation. This discourse takes the form of detailed analyses of specific verbal constructions--for example, when a command has the form "if…
Means of Intelligibility is a study in comparative semiotics based in three groups of Classical Arabic texts. After a consideration of the semiotic paradigms of Aristotle and Augustine and their continuing preponderance in the post-Hellenic West, the dissertation's first chapter…
This dissertation is about the fundamental role of ambiguity in the formation, perception, social reception, and aesthetics of Islamic architecture. My argument stands against mainstream academic views, which stress the primacy of social needs in the interpretation of the ambigu…
