so how can you make that a substantive argument for invalidating your opponent’s position?

This is clarified by the sixth point: Your claim, “How could that be, when ‘figurative’ and ‘literal’ are attributes of expressions, not of contextual indicators relating to meaning, so that ‘literal’ cannot be an attribute of the combination?” merely restates the terminology you have devised. If your opponent replies, “Rather, ‘literal’ designates the whole that conveys meaning—the expression together with the contextual indicator relating to meaning,” he has countered your terminology with his own. His terminology is better than yours, since he calls all the forms of expression Allah has taught His servants literal, whereas you classify much or most of them as figurative.

If you say, “Then this dispute is merely verbal,” you will be told: That is your first answer—your statement that the dispute over this is merely verbal.

The statement, “I have another answer beyond this”—namely, your claim, “How could that be, when ‘figurative’ and ‘literal’ are attributes of expressions, not of contextual indicators relating to meaning, so that ‘literal’ cannot be an attribute of the combination?”—implies that you have offered a second answer distinct from the first. Yet it merely restates what that terminology means: we have agreed to call the expression ‘literal,’ excluding the contextual indicators relating to meaning.

It is therefore clear that you have nothing beyond your acknowledgment that the dispute is merely verbal. Thus, even if this terminology were sound, those who deny figurative usage and call all speech literal, provided that it makes the intended meaning clear, would not have been any worse