Life Narrative and the Digital

The Evolution of Arabic Self-Expression in the Western Mediterranean: Using an Annotation Schema as a Comparative Framework

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.14.42231

Keywords:

self-expression, digital methods, Arabic and Islamic Studies, corpus stylistics

Abstract

This paper presents a hybrid quantitative-qualitative methodology for the comparative study of texts of an autobiographical nature and their evolution. It is divided into three sections followed by some concluding remarks. The introductory section argues for the need to use digital and empirical methods in the study of self-expression within the pre-modern Arabic and Islamic cultural context, considering the autobiographical genre as a Western and modern conception. The second section presents the process of developing an annotation schema that encodes the authorial voice in a sample corpus and its application as a comparative framework. The sample corpus consists of works belonging to the riḥla (travel narratives) genre produced in the western Mediterranean during the fourteenth century. In the third section, the schema is put into practice in a case study, through the analysis of an early-sixteenth-century North African text with similar characteristics. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of this methodology in the study of the structure, content, and language use in these texts, drawing connections between works and authorial styles, and questioning the relevance of genre as a framework for analysis.

Author Biography

Laila M. Jreis-Navarro, Universidad de Zaragoza

Laila M. Jreis-Navarro is an assistant professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain). She holds a degree in Arabic Philology and a PhD in Languages, Texts, and Contexts from the Universidad de Granada (Spain). In her doctoral thesis she studied the memoirs of the Andalusi intellectual Ibn al-Khaṭīb focusing on his exile to the Maghreb. She has authored several studies on travel narratives (riḥla) and self-expressive writings produced in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. She has conducted research in Morocco, Algeria, United Kingdom, Chile, and the United Arab Emirates. In her postdoctoral research project, Mining and Modelling Subjectivity in Pre-modern Western Arabic Corpora, she applied a linguistic and analytical approach to disentangle the codification of subjectivity in auto-expressive works produced by intellectuals and active agents in the heated hegemonic struggle between the two shores of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Published

2025-05-09

Issue

Vol. 14 (2025): EJLW

Section

Life Narrative and the Digital

Copyright (c) 2025 Laila M. Jreis-Navarro

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