🏷️ 2025-11-20 - v0.1.1 (Machine-readable formats added)This update introduces full machine-readable exports of the Arabic Rhetorical Device Taxonomy to support digital humanities research, linked-data workflows, and reproducible computational analysis. Added in this release: A new machine-readable/ directory containing: JSON JSON-LD RDF/XML TTL Each file corresponds to a single rhetorical device (Q-item) from BalaghaBase.org, the project's custom Wikibase instance. Formats are aligned with semantic web standards and suitable for ingestion into digital humanities tools, corpus annotation systems, and knowledge graphs. This marks the first structured data release of the taxonomy, expanding its use beyond human-readable PDF/HTML formats into machine-actionable forms. 🏷️ 2025-11-17 - v0.1.0 (First public release)This is the first public, versioned release of the Arabic Rhetorical Device Taxonomy, making three years of iterative development openly available on GitHub. Included in this release: Complete taxonomy of 95 rhetorical devices across Domains A–D. Full PDF and HTML snapshot exports from the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric. A combined PDF of all devices for offline use. CITATION.cff, README, LICENSE, and taxonomy-index. Stable structure suitable for long-term citation and Zenodo archiving. 🏷️ 2022-09-06 - Initial draft (pre-release)The first complete draft of the taxonomy was created and submitted as part of the author's Masters dissertation at the University of Exeter. The taxonomy was created to assist in accurately identifying Arabic rhetorical devices in texts, as part of the author's research project to measure the rhetorical density of texts. Rhetorical density is a novel quantitative linguistics metric devised by the author, based on the relative frequency analysis of rhetorical devices. It enables comparative measurement of rhetoricity across texts and genres. It is defined as the number of rhetorical devices per 100 orthographic words or word units. This early version of the taxonomy formed the conceptual foundation for identifying Arabic rhetorical devices consistently, and for building a stable ontology for rhetorical analysis.

The Arabic Rhetorical Device Taxonomy (v0.1.1) is the first fully structured, versioned classification of classical Arabic rhetorical devices published as part of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric. Developed between 2022–2025, the taxonomy systematises 95 rhetorical devices drawn from the three major branches of classical rhetoric: ʿilm al-maʿānī, ʿilm al-bayān, and ʿilm al-badīʿ, in addition to a small set of negative rhetorical effects. This release provides a stable, citable reference for researchers in Arabic rhetoric, corpus linguistics, NLP, digital humanities, and classical literature. It includes: A hierarchical ontology of all rhetorical devices Definitions grounded in classical Arabic sources Examples and usage notes PDF and self-contained HTML snapshots of all entries A complete taxonomy index for quick navigation Version-locked documentation suitable for academic citation and peer review The taxonomy was originally developed for the author’s research into rhetorical density - a new quantitative linguistics metric for measuring the density of rhetorical devices in Arabic texts, also known as a text's rhetoricity. It now serves as a foundational resource for computational analysis, annotation work, large-scale corpus studies, and educational applications. This Zenodo deposit archives the exact state of the taxonomy at the time of release (20 November 2025). Subsequent updates will appear as new versioned releases.

📬 About the Author Dr Mandar Marathe | SOAS ProfilePhD Researcher in Arabic Rhetoric | SOAS University of LondonLinkedIn | ORCID | Google ScholarArabic Rhetorical Device Taxonomy Related Projects 📚 Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric - Reference source for Arabic rhetorical devices 💯 BALAGHA Score - Arabic rhetorical density analysis 📖 Balagha Corpus - Annotated texts for Arabic rhetorical analysis 📡 BalaghaBase.org - Semantic knowledge graph for Arabic rhetoric 🔬 Rhetorical Density - Methodology and discussion of rhetorical density as a quantitative metric