Originally, Arabs of al-Jahiliyya – living in the century and half before the hijra of the Prophet Muḥammad – used the term sayyid to denote a tribal chief. Such a figure was expected to stick to a certain code of behavior, which was summarized under a set of six traits one can roughly render as: generosity and hospitality, bravery and loyalty, endurance and patience, moderation, humbleness, and eloquence. With time, such a defined code became a script of honorable behavior, whereas the very term sayyid began to be metonymically used in reference to a man of honor.

In my project, I intend to represent a cultural role schema of sayyid in an analysis on associated linguistic frames, i.e., on the repertoire of linguistic choices available to the users of Early Poetic Arabic (EPA) in their discourse on sayyid and sayyid’s behavior. I postulate to represent the schema mainly by describing the cultural script of honorable behavior summarized in the aforementioned six traits. In this, I plan to apply two separate methods: Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) by Anna Wierzbicka, and an analysis of conceptual metaphors and metonymies. The former will aim to propose a detailed definition of the honorable conduct in culturally transparent terms of semantic primes. Meanwhile, the latter will offer an insight into the pre-Islamic Arabic imagery of sayyid and sayyid’s behavior, which was a part of the conceptual system of the culture of Arabs of al-Jahiliyya.

All in all, in my project, I mean to investigate the history of the culture, which underlies the conceptualization processes discernable in the EPA lexicon. Thus, my study is the first attempt to apply the methods of Cultural Linguistics into the study on historical stages of Arabic language and culture.