An Arabic, illustrated, exploration of all that is and isn’t taboo, Rooted in the Body: Arabic Metaphor and Morphology, a new book coming out by Lisa J. White and Mahmoud Shaltout (MacToot) is a comic-illustrated exploration of the rich vocabulary derived from body parts in Arabic that are often used as metaphors. White is an American who began studying Arabic in 1975 in her last year at university to satisfy her linguistic curiosity about non-Indo-European languages. Arabic turned out to be so fascinating that, before long, she realized she wanted to make a career of teaching it to adult second language learners like herself, eventually studying Arabic on three continents and in five universities. Along the way, she has done some literary translations from Arabic to English, including Mohammed Afifi’s Taraniim fii Dhill Tamara, which won the Arabic translation award in 2000. Arabic morphology later became her primary research interest, and she was looking for new ways to teach it. Between 2005 and 2008, she stumbled on the idea of using body parts and their derivatives to help her post-elementary students navigate Arabic’s root and pattern system. By this she…
