Afnan H. Fatani

Afnan H. Fatani is a full professor of linguistics at the department of European Languages & Literature, King Abdul-Aziz University. The author of a book on linguistic iconicity and spatio-temporal language, she has published multiple entries in Routledge’s Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, nominated as winner of RUSA 2007 award for Outstanding Reference Sources by the American Library Association. Her most cited entries include; Translation and the Qur'an, Language and the Qur'an, Aya, Parables and Colours. Her chapter in the fourth volume of the Iconicity series by John Benjamins is perhaps the first English-language analysis of the iconic aspects of sound symbolism in a prayer from the Qur'an. The funded research she received from King Abdul-aziz University is the first market analysis of the translation industry in Saudi Arabia and the first to address the major obstacles hindering the integration of translation technologies into university curricula. She has also published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Quranic Studies and the Journal of Arabic Linguistic Tradition (JALT). Her 60-page research paper on Al-Zarkashi's treatise on ellipsis in the Qur'an is the first scholarly English translation of his works and the first to highlight the significance of Al-Zarkashi's linguistic contribution. She is a on the advisory board of a number of scholarly journals and has presented papers in many international conferences on linguistic and Quránic studies. In terms of her teaching experience, she has taught numerous linguistic courses including semantics, socio-linguistics, applied linguistics, phonetics and phonology, as well as supervising a number of MA and PhD dissertations dealing with Arabic linguistics and the linguistic structure of the Qur'an. Research interests include cultural linguistics, semantics and the interrelation between language, culture and the Qur’an.