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De-Militarization of Language in Arabic Grammar Books and its Impact on Human Life

Summary

The paper argues that Arabic grammar teaching has become "militarized," meaning it relies on violent example vocabulary. The authors trace the habit to Sibawayh's eighth-century Al-Kitab, whose illustrative verbs mean going, killing and hitting. They claim later grammar books inherited it, especially through the stock paradigm verb Zaraba ("beat"). Their method is described as content analysis, but in practice it is one frequency count in a single textbook used in Iranian institutes. That count is paired with secondary claims about how words affect the brain and a "human aura." The main conclusion is that negative example words raise anxiety and irritability and reduce cooperation. On that basis the authors call for "de-militarizing" grammar materials and using positive, peace-oriented examples. They see this as important because seminary (Houza) students from many countries carry their textbooks' values home. For our library, the empirical support is thin. There is no corpus, no comparison and no controlled measurement, and the aura and gene-expression arguments come from popular or non-peer-reviewed sources. The paper is best read as a position piece on how example-sentence choice shapes learners.

Key points

  • The paper names Sibawayh (Abu Bishr Amr ibn Uthman, 760–796) and his five-volume Al-Kitab as the origin of violent paradigm examples such as qatala (kill) and yazrib (hit).
  • The textbook examined is "Dars Nameh Sarf and Nahw" (Mousavian). It has 130 pages with a main body of 110, and the authors report about 100 uses of Zaraba in that body.
  • Other violent words reported in grammar books include sword, enemy, killing and revenge. The authors leave open whether this pattern is deliberate.
  • The psychological claims rest on Newberg & Robert as cited via Cass (2017), on aura literature, and on Smith (1997), "De-Militarizing Language." The paper has 20 references in total.
  • The proposed remedy is example vocabulary that is positive and rooted in Islamic tradition, motivated by Houza students coming from 130 countries.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Paradigm examples are not neutral: when one stock verb fills every inflection table, its meaning is repeated thousands of times, so the choice of placeholder lexicon deserves deliberate design. — For Mova (back): When generating example sentences or paraphrases from templates, draw fillers from a curated, varied verb pool instead of one default verb, and log which fillers were used.
  • I2. A simple audit method is to count how often one lexical item recurs per page of instructional text, which exposes a skew nobody chose consciously. — For Mova (learn): Run frequency audits on silver data and teacher-generated examples to catch verbs or frames that dominate the training signal, and treat such skew as a defect to fix.
  • I3. The paper's core worry is that the semantic content of examples (violence) leaks into what learners absorb beyond the grammar point being taught. — For Mova (frames): Profile test and training sets by VerbNet class and frame type, for example how many items are about hitting or killing, so frame-labelling quality is not tuned mostly on one narrow event domain.
  • I4. Textbooks are hard to change once adopted, so bias in early teaching material persists for generations of learners. — For Mova (answer): Build school-course and fable QA sets with an explicit balance check on event types from the start, because early benchmark choices get frozen into later evaluation.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields: Linguistics & languages

Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.22034/imjpl.2023.14968.1075

@article{jamani2023de,
  title = {{De-Militarization of Language in Arabic Grammar Books and its Impact on Human Life}},
  author = {Jamani, Kazim Raza and Shameli, Abas-Ali},
  journal = {International Multidisciplinary Journal of Pure Life 10},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.22034/imjpl.2023.14968.1075},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.22034/imjpl.2023.14968.1075}
}

References

18 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. ## 1. The Holy Quran. 2. Amerian, Majid. and Ali-Morad Khaivar (2014). Textbook Selection, Evaluation and Adaptation Procedures. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World. Vol. 6 (Issue. 1): 523-533. 3. find
  2. Anufrieva, V.P. and Anufriev, M.G (2018). Influence of Thoughts over Human Aura. International Union of Medical and Applied Bioelectrography. 4. find
  3. Bod, Rens (2013). A new History of Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5. find
  4. Cass, Warren (2017). Influence: How to Raise Your Profile, Manage Your Reputation and Get Noticed. New York: Wiley Publishing. 6. find
  5. Harrison, Theo (2022). Understanding The Seven Layers Of The Human Aura: Their Functions and Meanings. The Minds Journal: Your Guide To Better Mental Health And Relationships: https://themindsjournal.com/layers -of-human-aura 7. ↗
  6. Hosseini Dehshiri, Afzal-Sadat (2022). Moral Education of Adolescents based on Religious Teachings. International Multidisciplinary Journal of Pure Life. Vol. 9 (Issue. 32): 99-145. 8. Imam Khamenie, Syed Ali. Supreme Leader's Website: https://english.khamenei.ir 9. ↗
  7. International Quran News Agency (2019). Quran Translated in 16 Local Languages in Indonesia: https://iqna.ir/en/news/3467737/qu ran-translated-in-16-local-languages-in-indonesia 10. ↗
  8. Kumar, Krishna (2005). Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas. 2th Edition. New Dehli: Sage Publication. 238 ( International Multi. J. of PURE LIFE. 10 (33): 219-239, Winter. 2023 11. find
  9. Majlisi, Mohammad Baqer (1983). Bihar ul-Anwar. Beirut: Mu'assist al-Wafa. tional/karnataka/textbooks-should-not-be-political-tools/article65460076.ece 12. find
  10. Marques, A (2013). The Human Aura; a Study. San Francisco: General Books. 18. find
  11. Sibawayh, Abi Bashar (1988). The Kitab of Sibawayh. Cairo. Al-Khanji School. 13. find
  12. Motahhari, Murtaza (2008). The Collection of Works. 4th Edition. Tehran: Sadra Publications. 19. find
  13. Smith, Claude (1997). De-Militarizing Language. Peace Magazine. Vol. 13 (Issue. 4): 14-15. 14. find
  14. Mousavian, Syed Mohammad (2016). Text Book of Sarf and Nahv. Qom: Safir Salamat Publications. 15. find
  15. Naseem, Mohammad Ayaz (2014). Deconstructing Militarism in Pakistani Textbooks. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society. Vol. 6 (Issue. 2): 10-24. 16. find
  16. Panchadasi, Swami (1940). The Human Aura: Astral Colors and Thought Forms. India: Yogi Publication Society. 17. find
  17. Shivakumar, Doddalahalli Kempegowda (2022). Textbooks should not be Political Tools: https://www.thehindu.com/news/na 20. ↗
  18. Surendran, C.P (2017). 'Don't Teach Students Hindu-Muslim Riots in Indian History': https://www.khaleejtimes.com/artic le/dont-teach-students-hindu-muslim-riots-in-indian-history De-militarization of Language… K.R. Jamani. & A.A. Shameli (239 AUTHOR BIOSKETCHES Jamani, Kazim Raza. Faculty of Islam, Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Morality, Education and Psychology, Department of Morality and Training, Al-Mustafa International University, Qom, Iran, and M.Phil in Education, Department of Education, Iqra University, Karachi, Pakistan. ✓ E m a i l : kazimjamani@gmail.com ✓ ORCID: www.orcid.org/0000-0003-4183-4434 Shameli, Abas-Ali. Faculty of Islam, Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Morality, Education and Psychology, Department of Morality and Training, Head of Department, Al-Mustafa International University, Qom, Iran, and Macgil University, Canada. ✓ E m a i l : aashameli39@gmail.com ✓ ORCID: www.orcid.org/0000-0002-9741-5303 HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE Jamani, Kazim Raza. and Abas-Ali Shameli (2023). De-Militarization of Language in Arabic Grammar Books and its Impact on Human Life. International Multidisciplinary Journal of PURE LIFE. 10 (33): 219-239. D O I : https://doi.org/10.22034/imjpl.2023.14968.1075 DOR: https://dorl.net/20.1001.1.26767619.2023.10.33.6.2 U R L : http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/article_7707.html ↗ our card

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