Sacred or Sinister? The Dual Emotional Valence of Arabic Script in Cross-Cultural Perception: A Semiotic and Psychological Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56830/Keywords:
Arabic calligraphy, visual semiotics, cultural framing, emotional valence, Islamophobia, neuroaesthetics, graphic designAbstract
Cultural and religious framing profoundly shapes emotional and cognitive responses to Arabic script, transforming it from a linguistic tool into a charged visual artifact. When viewers lack linguistic comprehension, the script's interpretation relies heavily on pre-existing cultural schemas and social identities. Drawing on Charles Sanders Peirce's triadic semiotics—where signs operate as icons (resembling their object through form), indexes (pointing causally to something), or symbols (conveying learned meanings)—this paper examines how these modes interact with framing theory to produce polarized outcomes. While acknowledging contextual nuances and avoiding oversimplification of cultural binaries, the analysis highlights a research gap: prior studies on Islamic art emphasize aesthetics but underexplore cross-cultural threat perceptions. Findings advance graphic design theory by illustrating semiotics' role in cultural misframing, with implications for design education and media literacy. This interpretive study employs multiple-case analysis, visual-semiotic methods, and critical discourse analysis to dissect these mechanisms in two revelatory cases, supplemented by a third illustrative example from a YouTube video (2024). In Muslim-majority contexts like Lahore, Pakistan (2024), the script is framed as inherently sacred, evoking reverence and protective outrage against perceived desecration. In contrast, in U.S. "culture-war" settings like Augusta County, Virginia (2015), Islamophobic narratives frame it as a threat, triggering fear and hostility. Psychologically, these frames engage neuroaesthetic pathways, where visual features such as fluidity and directionality are appraised as divine harmony or alien illegibility, leading to positive or negative emotional valence. Findings advance graphic design theory by illustrating semiotics' role in cultural misframing, with implications for design education and media literacy.
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