A Study on linguistic strategies of dysphemistic mimesis in “Mathnavi Ma'navi”

By Naming their book as "language as Shield and Weapon", Allan and Burridge refer to two pragma-linguistic functions of a text: euphemistic language as shield and dysphemistic language as weapon. Dysphemism includes derogatory, name giving and any offensive terms which are used to humiliate others. In other words, any use of language, whether comprising abusive or not, which invokes the negative sense in addressee and makes him feel disdained, is accounted for dysphemism in language. Sometimes dysphemism takes a psychological aspect and that's when it doesn't necessarily happen to insult or violate taboos but its occurrence is due to some intrinsic motivations in the man. When a speaker minds to express strong affection, he ignores positive or negative quality of his inner feeling and chooses the most suitable linguistic sign to reflect its intensity. That is an expression normally used to induce negative affectivity. In this paper, we will take dysphemism in two meaning (as taboo word and as an impromptu psychological reaction). Dysphemism gives us ways of talking about the evaluative content of language insofar that it doesn't describe a thing in the world, but rather expresses the speaker's attitude towards it. Linguists believe that no feature in the word makes it banned & illegal or vice versa, legitimate & polite. The origin of this prohibition is customs and view of a society that enforces restrictive laws. This article seeks, taken descriptive-analytical method, to integrate the three approaches of semantics, rhetorics and pragmatics predominantly focusing on the fifth chapter of Mathnavi of Mowlavi, in order to answer the following questions: What are the main reasons for using dysphemism as artistic tool in Mathnavi? What linguistic tools have been used to create dysphemistic implications in Mathnavi? How does each of these tools affect the form and content of message in the text? The reasons for occurrence of such expressions in Mathnavi can generally be categorized into four components: psychological-affective; aesthetic; stylistic; epistemologico- cultural. In aesthetic component, the poet has partly embraced the tradition of Persian and mystical poetry. In Mathnavi, dysphemisms are either satirical or humorous. But what matters is the difference between Rumi's satire and that of other Persian poets. Rumi is the first mystic-poet to use dysphemism in divulging mystical secrets. In field of epistemologico-cultural components, what is most relevant to the rhetoric of dysphemisms, is ideological polarization of "we-other" applied by the author that exists in deep-structure of most of the figures in the text. Dysphemism is one of the linguistic signs of power which creates tension in the text by intensifying polarization (positive self-representation and negative other-representation) with help of binary oppositions and contrasts. These expressions ultimately lead to the realization of the roles of mystical language (as: describing, consolidating and confirming of own accepted ideology); to the extent that all rhetorical and linguistic strategies in Mathnavi are based on these ideological oppositions. This study mentions the most frequent dysphemistic tools that are able to make stylistic foregrounding, namely: binary opposition, metaphor, irony and metonymy which play more distinctive role in language of the text. In discussion of opposition, external and internal opposition were mentioned and metaphorical opposition was introduced as a subtype of external ones. Metaphorical oppositions rendered the internal oppositional concepts into external layer in different ways, especially using animal category. Moreover, dysphemistic paradoxes are subtype of internal opposition which in contrast with euphemistic mystical paradoxes, carry a variety of purposes such as: jeer, disagreement, joking, surprising and drawing attention. Metaphor is another prominent stylistic factor in the text through the description of desirable/undesirable epistemological or cultural space. As far as sexuality is concerned, there are two types of metaphors: conceptual & literary. A common conceptual metaphor in Mathnavi is: "sex is eating". This metaphor results from the mapping between the source domain of "sex" and the target domain of "eating". In literary metaphors, from source and target domain, unlike the former one, only the source domain is taboo. While the taboo signifier unexpectedly points to a non-taboo and mystical signified. One of the reasons for resorting to vulgar metaphors in Mathnavi is desanctification of a concept by desanctifying its linguistic privacy so that; the language will not be a mask for distortion & lie. Irony can be divided into two categories: verbal and rhetorical (irony in the same western sense of the word). Ironies have two major pragmatic functions: 1) understatement; 2) overstatement. The former with semantic reduction and the latter with semantic extension try to be more representational. In artistic and humorous ironies, understatement is more dominant and in verbal ironies, that arises from folk language and has a controversial characteristic, overstatement is dominant function. Overstatement in these ironies makes them to work as an element for negative other-representation. In discussion of metonymy, we applied a division including: a) metonymy with more important rather than less important ranking (between two parts of metonymy) and b) metonymy without this ranking. From 84 dysphemistic metonymies, metonymy of specific/general relation with 48 frequencies was ranked first.