A Critical Analysis of Major Sources on Rhetorical Figuresin Kurdish Language

The knowledge of Rhetorical Figures is considered as one of the three components of the broader field of Rhetorics. The mere size of the available literature on Rhetorical Figures reveals this very fact that it has received more critical attention comparing with the other two branches of Rhetorics. Seeking to thoroughly analyze the Kurdish sources on Rhetorical Figures, the present research focuses on eight textbooks, which are devoted to this subject and have been originally published in Iraqi Kurdistan. Addressing the shortcomings of these textbooks can positively encourage the researchers to overcome them and pave the way for more fruitful investigations in this regard. The present research is qualitative in nature and mainly makes use of Library Methods for gathering the relevant information. The final findings demonstrate that the main drawbacks of the aforementioned textbooks include the following: generalizing the overall patterns of speech figures in Arabic Language to Kurdish; inappropriate titling of the poetic patterns as “Literary devices;” using different, and sometimes contradictory, terms for referring to a single Rhetorical device; employing the technical terms of the fields of plagiarism and Figures of Thought as terms of Rhetorical Figures; making blatant mistakes in definition of technical terms of the field of Rhetoric.