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|b It is well -know reality that there is a close relationship between language as tool and the religious discourse. The Holy Quran is revealed in Arabic as well as the Sunnah which, first and foremost clarifies the meaning of the Quran. The Islamic Shari'ah cannot fully be understood unless the Arabic language is entirely mastered. Hence the interest of the scholars of Islamic Legal Theory or Usul al-Fiqh in the link between the word and its meaning, commonly known as " positive verbal denotation". Scholars of Usul al-Fiqh maintain that words do not denote their meaning in and of themselves . This paper attempts to investigate an important topic in this respect namely:" the connotation of words and their implications according to the Hanafi Scholars of Usul". \ In this paper, I tackled the issue of why the scholars of Usul studied the relationship between words and their meanings and the methodology they applied in their investigation . Then, I dealt with the linguistic as well as the technical definition of "connotation" according to logicians and and scholars of Islamic legal theory, and then I discussed the two types of dalalah i.e "connotation" verbal and non¬verbal, the meaning of connotation of a word, connotation through a word and the difference between both of them. I then discussed the original literal indication of the word according to Hanafi Scholars of Usul where I generally explained the ways in which a word indicates its meaning. Then, I explained the connotations in detail, discussing the connotations of an expression and its archtypes; the difference between the literal text and its technical meaning; the implicit indication; the difference between implicit and explicit indication. Thereafter, I investigated the issue of the authority of the literal connotations and the difference between Qat>ie or absolute and Zanni or Speculative in the perspective of the Hanafi Scholars of Usul. \ The concluding chapter investigated the issue of Ta>arud or conflict between the various types of connotations. I presented a working definition for what Ta>arud is, then I discussed the final ruling regarding the existence of Ta>arud among various types of connotations.
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