Examining the attributes of the world and the hereafter in Nahj al-Balagha sermons based on the conceptual relationship of semantic opposition (A case study of directional and symmetrical opposition)

Directional and symmetrical opposition are considered two common types of semantic opposition. Semantic opposition is a special topic of semantics. Semantic opposition is one of the most important and frequent semantic relations in Nahj al-Balagha. The variety of semantic opposition in this world and the hereafter creates a variety of semantic implications, which is one of the necessary tools in the semantic analysis of this literary work. The present research is compiled by the descriptive-analytical method. In this research, due to the widespread discussion of the semantic opposition between the attributes of this world and the hereafter in the sermons of Nahj al-Balagha, two common types of opposition between these attributes were investigated. The results showed that, Imam has drawn some features for the world and the hereafter, which represent the opposites of different directions with respect to the reference point and are referred to as directional opposites. These opposites, including 15 cases, are considered one of the most frequent types of opposites between the mutual attributes of this world and the hereafter. Pairs of mutual attributes according to the features of symmetrical opposition, which have the lowest frequency between the attributes of this world and the hereafter, including 3 items, are placed after the directional opposition. Imam has used these attributes to express the features of this world and the hereafter; the occurrence of one of the reciprocal words implies the occurrence of the other word.