The creative use of words in the language of mystics based on Langacker's domain theory

When articulating or understanding linguistic expressions, we are involved in completely complex and delicate processes of conceptual construction drawn from many and diverse sources. Among these sources is ‘lexical meanings’. From the first periods of the development of Islamic Sufism, the creation of novel and unconventional meanings and linguistic games with words can be seen in a wide range of mystics’ languages. The textual juxtaposition of the conventional meaning of the word in front of the creative and original meaning leads to semantic polyphony, and the mystic’s goal of this juxtaposition is to break the customs and linguistic habits as the axis of aesthetics in Sufi rhetoric and as a result, anti-habits in looking at the linguistic and meta-linguistic reality. The current research tries to investigate the meaning-making mechanisms of mystics through ‘lexical semantic ambiguity’ according to the theoretical and methodological foundations of Langaker's domain theory. Based on the results of the research, the mystic’s creative dealing with the two phenomena of ‘polysemy’ and ‘homonymy’, while providing a suitable platform for meaning creation and discourse creation by changing the semantic fields of words in a deconstructive and defamiliarizing process, has added to the poetics and aesthetic value of the mystic language.