Interpretation and Setting its Process by Evoking the Concept of Context in Arab Heritage

Abstract

For hundreds years, the Arab-Islamic heritage has represented a comprehensive human culture with its multiple intellectual and cognitive orientations. Based on one of these human approaches, the current study deals with the interpretive approach that has emerged in the modern era. This study aims to provide a clear vision of the existence of solid foundations for interpretive thought in the Arab heritage with its various intellectual orientations.

This foundation stems from the perception of Arab heritage scholars, with their various intellectual orientations of what the linguistic sign is, as they acknowledge the prominent role of the human mind in determining the meaning, as well as the influence of the situation and the actual use of the sign in determining its intended meaning. So this thought achieves the availability of cognitive foundations that enable the linguistic sign to have the possibility of transformation and the possibility of multiple understandings and readings of the linguistic sign so that it no longer has one meaning and one concept. This is something that is inconsistent with the prevailing perception of Arabic linguistic thought and its reliance on the positive meaning of words as the basis of all semantic movements.

The second part of this study aims to present a new vision of the concept of the maqām context in the Arab heritage and how its constant presence among scholars of etymology, rhetoric and interpretation represents a strong regulation in determining the meaning and reaching the correct interpretation of various texts and discourses by describing the maqām context as a regulator of the interpretive process which protects against falling into the chaos of interpretation and manipulating the texts, leading to lose their meanings and intended goals.