The language is an expression of Alfaazh (wordings) that have been provided and set for meanings.

The most important role and function of the language is for it to be a means for sharing understanding amongst the people. That is because the human, by his nature, needs to live with others of his kind. There therefore needs to be a means for them to be able to understand one another for the purpose and sake of cooperating and solving the problems that they encounter in life.

Language is a matter that has been provided and set by the people (i.e. it is man-made or devised). It is therefore Istilaahiy (conventional) which means that it represents an agreement amongst a collective of people to put down and set particular wordings to indicate particular meanings. Its wordings (Alfaazh) consist of and are constructed from letters (huroof) that occur from the human sound resulting from the meeting of the air with the movements of the mouth, tongue and throat. With these Alfaazh (worded expressions) the person can express what is within himself in terms of mental pictures of things and actions. A person could see something from a distance and provide it with the Lafzh (wording) of a rock. Then when he gets closer to it he believes it to be a tree and so allocates the name of tree upon it. Then when he gets even closer to it, he finds that it is a person and so he calls it by the Lafzh (wording) of a person. This shows that the external meaning for the thing did not change with the changing of the Lafzh (wording) that was given to it. Rather, it was only the mental picture of that thing that changed that the person formulated in his brain. Consequently, the Alfaazh (worded expressions) do not indicate by a definite indication (Dalaalah Qat’iyah) to the true reality of realities. Rather, it expresses what is within the mind in terms of visualisations or images of that reality. The Alfaazh (wordings) could be in conformity with the true reality of the reality or it could be contrary to it.

The language, therefore, represents a mental picture for which a worded expression has been provided whilst it does not represent the external essence of a thing or matter. The language, as such, represents a vessel for the thought whilst it is not the thought itself. That is because the Fikr (thought) is the judgment upon the reality whilst language is a tool for passing this judgment and expressing it to others.