A Proposed Collocational Marker for the Computational Identification of Metaphor: The Case of Metaphor in the Ever-Glorious Qur’ān

Abstract

The present paper is a corpus-based study that proposes a collocational criterion to computationally identify metaphor with special reference to metaphor in the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān. The study draws on studies on metaphors in the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān, the conceptual theory of metaphor (1980), studies on collocations as well as computational studies of metaphor, in general, to finally arrive at a collocational marker for metaphoricity toward a computational identification of metaphor in the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān. The study adopts a quantitative as well as a qualitative approach in investigating and analyzing metaphors in the corpus to contribute to the input of computer software for identifying metaphor candidates (i.e., lexical items that are likely to have been used metaphorically). The corpus of the study is two surahs from the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān, namely Sūrat Yūsuf and Sūrat Ar-Rā’d. The manual identification of metaphors on the two Sūrahs of the study is achieved by referring to authentic exegeses of the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān and interpreting the meanings of the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān. The paper ends by suggesting a collocational marker for metaphors in the Ever-Glorious Qur'ān, which could be adopted and applied to other corpora.