Kināyah, Ḥaqīqah & Majāz
Introduction
This article clarifies the the concepts of ḥaqīqah, majāz, and kināyah as they are discussed in works of bayān (the study of figurative language in Classical Arabic).
First of all, ḥaqīqah does not mean “truth” or even “literally true” much of the time. Rather, we can summarize the definitions as follows:
Ḥaqīqah: The literal meaning is the intended meaning.
Majāz: The literal meaning implies the intended meaning.
Kināyah: A parallel meaning demonstrates the intending meaning.
Ḥaqīqah & Majāz
The ḥaqīqah and majāz mentioned in the works of bayān are either lexical (lughawī) or syntactic (isnādī or ʿaqlī). Something is lexically literal (ḥaqīqah lughawiyyah) when every word is intended in its literal sense. This holds even if the statement is logically, theologically, scientifically, or politically incorrect. Thus, statements like “Jesus is the Son of God”, “Muslims pray six times a day”, “water boils at 50 C”, and “the United Nations is run by Jews” all fall into the category of being lexically literal, as each word is intended literally. It doesn’t matter if the statements are true. What matters is that the words are being used in their literal sense.
Now, consider the following:
بنى الأميرُ المدينةَ
“The prince built the city”: each word is intended literally. There is a prince, a city, and it was built. This is true at the lexical level. Thus, this sentence is a ḥaqīqah lughawiyyah. However, it is not the prince himself who built the city, but the workers that he commissioned. Thus, the departure from literalism is not at the lexical level — the level of word definitions — but at the syntactic level. What is not literally true is making the prince the subject of the verb “built”. This type of syntactically figurative language is called a majāz isnādī or ʿaqlī.
In Arabic, verbless sentences exist, and nominal predication allows for sentences like:
زيدٌ أسدٌ
Here, the sentence consists of two words, each of which is meant literally. Thus, this tashbīh (simile/metaphor), like all others, is a ḥaqīqah lughawiyyah. However, assuming Zayd is not literally a lion, the question arises as to where the majāz is occurring here. My own claim (which I have not read in any book) is that this is also a type of majāz isnādī, as the lack of a comparison operator in the simile causes the state of being a lion to be directly predicated to Zayd, indicating that Zayd is truly a lion. Since this figurativeness came about through predication (isnād), I consider this another type of syntactically figurative language.
Kināyah
There are four positions regarding whether kināyah is ḥaqīqah or majāz: that it is one or the other, that it is both, and that it is neither. The dominant position is that it is an unintended ḥaqīqah lughawiyyah. I will criticize this later.
I hold that kināyah is neither ḥaqīqah nor majāz, as a kināyah’s work doesn’t happen at the lexical or syntactic levels. Rather than using the definitions of words and grammar to imply a non-literal meaning, as is the case in majāz, kināyah is literally a (semantic) indirection. The listener or reader is not expected to understand the intended meaning from the words being spoken, but from a semantic (e.g., cultural, personal, etc.) association between the source and target meanings. We are no longer dealing at the level of words and grammatical constructs. Rather, the entire phrase means something entirely different due to this referenced semantic indirection.
Consider the following expression: “the one who broke my heart”. In terms of ḥaqīqah, it is impossible, as the person did not literally break the speaker’s heart. In terms of majāz, it means the person that left the speaker sad and without hope after they had been in love. (This is also the ḥaqīqah ʿurfiyyah of the expression, “to break someone’s heart”.) In terms of kināyah, it means a specific person known to the speaker, and possibly to the addressee.
For this reason, scholars may differ whether a particular figurative device is majāz or kināyah. The first is a lexical, or possibly syntactic, view of the sentence. It is a journey from the literal meanings of the words and grammatical constructs to their intended meanings via implication. The second is a semantic indirection: the source and target meanings are not necessarily related at all through language. When Susan says “the one who who broke my heart”, we know she means “Bob”, but not through language.
The Three Types of Kināyah
Kināyah ʿan mawṣūf: Indirectly referring to someone or something by an attribute, action, allusion, euphemism, dysphemism, hyperbole, parody, etc.
النعجة كناية عن المرأة
روح القدس عن جبريل عليه السلام
أبو جهل عن عمرو بن هشام
Langley (for the CIA)
الغائط عن الإخراج
الملامسة عن الجماع
Notice how some words are pure euphemisms that are culturally specific, such as using the word for a “ewe” to mean “wife”. This is not due to metaphor or synecdoche, but is pure euphemism.
Kināyah ʿan ṣifah: Indirectly referring to an attribute by painting a picture that demonstrates the attribute.
كثير الرماد كناية عن الكرم
نؤوم الضحى عن الترف والدلال
أربع أعين عن السعادة
وأتوا البيوت من أبوابها عن السلوك الصحيح
أطولكن يدا عن كثرة الصدقة
Kināyah ʿan nisbah: Indirect predication.
أرى الذكاءَ بينَ عَينَيهِ
المجد يمشي في ركابه
Why Kināyah is not Ḥaqīqah
Firstly, kināyah does not operate at the lexical or syntactic level. Secondly, most cases of kināyah ʿan nisbah do not fulfill the definition of ḥaqīqah, though some do, such as:
زيدٌ نقيُّ اليد
Finally, even some cases of kināyah ʿan ṣifah do not fulfill the definition of ḥaqīqah, such as the use of “four eyes” to mean “being delighted”.
Is Kināyah a Reverse Implication?
A number of works mention that kināyah works in the opposite direction of regular figurative language; i.e., instead of reaching the intended meaning through the implication of the literal meaning (as is the case with all other figurative language, whether ḥaqīqah or majāz), in the case of kināyah, the intended meaning implies the literal meaning, or is proof of it.
While this may be true for cases like “Zayd has a lot of ashes” to mean “he is generous”, it certainly doesn’t hold for cases like using “ewes” in place of “wives” or even “four eyes” in place of “being delighted”.
Rather, the uttered and intended meanings of a kināyah are related, but never through the former implying the latter. The latter may imply the former, or the relationship between them may be culturally more complex than that.
