Abstract:
The present study explores the role of linguistic deviation in evoking intuitive and epistemic experiences for readers of mystical texts, focusing specifically on The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur. Anchored in the framework of Threshold Theory from cognitive linguistics, the research analyzes syntactic, semantic, and rhetorical anomalies as deliberate tools to transmit mystical experiences. Using a qualitative and interpretive methodology with a cognitive approach to language, the study examines selected verses containing linguistic irregularities. Drawing upon core concepts of Threshold Theory, conceptual metaphor, and cognitive blending, the analysis reveals that such deviations actively disrupt conventional meaning-making and propel the reader toward deeper interpretive engagement. These disruptions – marked by cognitive pauses, suspended meanings, and logical fractures – facilitate a transition from surface understanding to lived, intuitive insight. Rather than being mere violations of standard language, these deviations are foundational mechanisms that render truth experientially accessible. Threshold Theory thus provides a compelling framework for reinterpreting the language of mysticism, with broader implications for literary, linguistic, and rhetorical analysis.
Machine summary:
For this reason, a cognitive analysis of these anomalies, especially with an emphasis on threshold theory, can provide a new perspective for understanding the linguistic mechanisms of mysticism; a perspective in which the boundary between language and experience, logic, intuition, form, and meaning is redefined in a fluid and dynamic manner.
The application of this theory in the analysis of mystical texts gains double importance; because in such texts, language often operates beyond everyday logic, and implicit, metaphorical, and symbolic meanings prevail over explicit expression (Cook, 1990: 62); therefore, the audience must, through engagement with linguistic anomalies, gradually cross a threshold that enables a deeper and more intuitive understanding.
1. threshold of understanding Table 3: Three-level diagram of the interpretability of anomalies (Refer to the page image) "He passed brilliantly over the tresses" | Reconstruction of structure through deletion of sentence elements, syntactic | "Half night" ← Deletion of subject, mind | Precedence and delay (taqdim and ta'khir), displacement of adverb and verb "And from the perfection of love, there is no 'is'" | Crossing linear logic, combination of contradictory concepts, semantic | "Not 'is' and 'is not'" ← Ontological overlap, activation of conceptual map | Polysemous vocabulary "Everyone took a role from it" | Symbolic interpretation and expansive metaphors, rhetorical | "Full" as multi-layered, experience, paradox, ambiguity | Absolute truth, meaning as intuitive perception of its details In fact, the linguistic anomalies in Mantiq al-Tayr operate at three levels—syntactic, semantic, and rhetorical—with different interpretive functions; however, in all these levels, a constant pattern exists: creating a disruption in normal perception and forcing the audience's mind to cross common cognitive boundaries.
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