A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Story of Prophet Musa (AS) in Surah Taha Using Van Leeuwen's Model

Van Leeuwen's semantic sociological model is one of the new approaches to and branches of critical discourse analysis, allowing critics to uncover the underlying layers of existing discourse by identifying the text's hidden layers and evaluating its social players.  The most often told story in the Holy Qur'ān is that of the Prophet Musa (AS), which because of its discourse system, the social character analysis, and discourse-oriented elements, one can better understand the text and uncover its hidden ideology. Using Van Leeuwen's model, the authors of this descriptive-analytical article thus attempted to analyze the discourse-oriented elements of the account of Prophet Musa (AS) in Surah Taha in order to determine how its social actors are represented. Thus, the most important question that the present research aims to answer concerns identifying the most frequent discourse elements of the account of Prophet Musa in Surah Taha according to Van Leeuwen's model, and the reason for this. The results show that van Leeuwen's discourse model is useful in evaluating the discourse system of Prophet Musa's (AS) story in this surah. Additionally, the frequency of the inclusion components (637 cases) is higher than those of the exclusion components (137 cases). This is consistent with the story's objective and indicates that the author plans to avoid hiding anything by showcasing proactive social agents so that the audience can easily and clearly learn the lesson.