A Functionalist Approach to Textual Cohesive Devices in the Story of Prophet Musa

Cohesion and coordination among the components of a text is one of the best features of a literary-artistic work. Following Functionalist linguist's studies, cohesion witnessed a swift boom, entering critique-related discussions. And cohesion became one of the most frequent terms in the history of modern criticism. Such studied also covered the analyses of Quranic and religious works. The story of Prophet Musa is one of the most beautiful Quranic stories, which enjoys such distinguished technical as well as artistic and stylistic features that it is utterly matchless when compared with man's speech. The present study aimed at proving the artistic cohesion of ayahs 3-43 in Surah Al-Qasas, which are related to the story of Prophet Musa, based on Michael Halliday's cohesion theory and Ruqaiya Hasan's complementary coordination theory. The results indicated that grammatical, lexical and linking cohesive factors together with other cohesive coordination features such as chains and interactions between chains created cohesion among the story elements. Thus, it is realized that there is a systematic relationship between the elements of a well-composed story which is a way to understanding the Quranic miracle.