Language in Views of Abouhelâl Askari

In this article, we investigate the views of Abouhelâl Askari, the Iranian man of letters in the forth century (AH), on the form and meaning in language, based on his two books Alsanâ’ateyn and Alforugh al-loghaviyeh. In the Alsanâ’ateyn he maintains that form and meaning are separated, relating the former to rhetoric and the latter to eloquence. He repeatedly insists on the importance of correct and simple meaning and also beautiful form; despite the fact that this view may seem contradictory and cause confusion in the reader weather to consider more importance to form or meaning. Meaning, in his view, is an arbitration or will of the mind and form would be correct if it is in accordance to that. Moreover, in understanding the meaning, not only simplicity of meaning is important, but also we should consider the articulator, the hearer and the placement of pauses. In the Alforugh ol-loghaviyeh (that is in principle a dictionary on stating the differences between seemingly synonymous words) he shows that he does not believe in complete synonymy. He first considers repetition and apposition to be evidence of lack of complete synonymy, then provides eight morphological, grammatical and semantical standards to identify the differences between seemingly synonymous words. We, However, can find some cases in which he does not follow his own views.