More astonishing still is the claim that this has been transmitted on a mass scale from the original coiners of the language and from successive generations, who have continually passed down in their statements and writings, on the authority of those original coiners, the designation of one usage as literal and another as figurative. Yet neither the claimant nor anyone else can produce even a single report establishing this, let alone the mass transmission he alleges.

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As for the argument he mentioned of those who deny figurative usage, he said:

“If it is objected: ‘Were there a figurative expression in the Arabic language, its meaning would either be delimited by a contextual indication or not. In the first case, the expression, together with the indication, would admit of no other meaning; thus, together with that indication, it would be literal in that meaning. In the second case, it would likewise be literal, since a literal expression means nothing other than one that conveys its meaning independently, without a contextual indication.’”

He then said:

“We reply: Our answer to the first case is that, unless a figurative usage is widely familiar, it conveys its meaning only through a contextual indication. This is all that is meant by figurative usage, and the dispute over this is terminological. Moreover, are not figurativeness and literalness attributes of expressions rather than of nonverbal contextual indications? Literalness therefore cannot be an attribute of the combination.”

The response is:

He has conceded that the dispute is terminological. We therefore say: If the dispute is terminological, and this distinction is a newly introduced convention which neither the Arabs nor any other nation employed, nor the Companions, the Successors, or the early generations, then speaking with the established expressions which they used, and in which the Quran was revealed, would be preferable to speaking using terminology