An Analysis of Silence Discourse in Imam Ali's Letter to Muawiah

Meaningful silence or absence of lingual items play notable part in discourse analysis and, as a denoting form, is capable of expressing ideas and completing speeches. As silence may be known to be a kind of relative absence and cause some happenings to be commented, silences are of denotation and as a part of language intend to affect the addressees by not expressing information or deleting it. Imam Ali`s letters, in addition to their guiding nature, may be regarded as those texts capable of study by the newest teachings in linguistics. In the paper, Imam Ali`s letter to Mu`awiyah, with an emphasis on legality of Alawi caliphate and opposing the opposite discourse, is reread on the basis of the theory of discourse silence. In the study, the theory of silence discourse has been focused on in two primary pivots in structural and semantic levels and, then, going beyond the text and relying on lingual texture, context and situation texture seeks to analyze the denotations of applicability of the discourse. As described in the paper, occurring some cases of structural, semantic and applied levels of silence in the letter show the effect of speaking in brief, convergence, imagination, attracting the addressees` mind and rebuking.