Professor Mohamed Mechbal
King Faisal Prize in Arabic Language and Literature 2021 Laureate
Topic: "The New Rhetoric"
Rhetoric is the mirror of the fine eloquence of Arabic language that forms part of our identity, and the scholarly field that has proved its ability to compete with new fields that deal with discourse
Mohamed Mechbal holds a Doctorate in Arabic literature, and he is a professor of rhetoric and literary criticism at the Faculty of Arts, Abdul-Malik al-Saadi University, Tetouan, Morocco.
Professor Mechbal held several managerial positions, including Head of the Research Training Unit on “Rhetoric of Ancient Arabic Prose Texts” and Head of “Doctoral Research Structure: Rhetoric and the Horizons of Discourse Analysis”. He has been a member of several committees, notably the scholarly committee of the journal Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis in Morocco, a member of the jury for the 2018 Morocco Book Prize, and a member of the jury for the 2016 International Prize for Arabic Fiction – Booker.
Professor Mechbal has published numerous research papers and studies specialized in rhetoric and criticism in refereed journals and periodicals. His scholarly and literary works include On the Rhetoric of Argumentation: An argumentative Rhetorical Approach to Discourse Analysis, Ethics and Identity Discourse: An argumentative Rhetorical Approach to Al-Jahedh’s Letters, On Modern Arab Rhetoric, Towards an Extended Rhetoric, The Novel & Rhetoric: Towards an Expanded Rhetorical Approach to the Arabic Novel, and Rhetoric and Literature: From Language Images to Discourse Images.
His research papers comprise The Aesthetic Effect on the Rhetorical Theory of Abd Al-Qaher Al-Jurjani, The Characteristic of Sarcastic Irony in the Letter of Quadrature and Circulation: A Systematic Proposal, Rhetoric and Literary Gender, Arabic Rhetoric and the Field of Characteristics, Rhetoric of the Narrative Text: A Critical Review, and The Status of Ethos in the New Rhetoric.
Professor Mechbal has participated in many conferences and seminars inside and outside Morocco. He has presented many research studies, including Rhetoric of the Literary Text: Origins and Extensions, which was published in 2008 by the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, as part of a book issued by the National Conference of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature Curricula for the Study of Arabic Literature in a Hundred Years.
He also supervised several collective books in the field of rhetoric which include: The Rhetoric of Religious Discourse, The Rhetoric of Political Discourse, and The Rhetoric of Historical Discourse.
Professor Mechbal was honored for his efforts in the field of criticism with several awards, including the 2018 Sheikh Zayed Prize for Critical Studies, and the Katara Prize for Critical Studies in 2018.
This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.
