فصلنامه پژوهش های ادبی - قرآنی
سال هشتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 30، تابستان 1399)

Action is an important and effective element in conceptualization embodied in a sentence by virtue of the verb as a dynamic constituent. Leonard Talmy, the renowned linguist in the field of cognitive semantics, believes that dynamic verbs are the results of four motive, figure, ground, and directional components. In the Holy Qur’an, the dynamic verb "anzala" is a directional verb which has a high frequency because of its usage in topics related to the sending down of the Qur’an and mercy unto people. This study aimed to analyze the function of the verb "anzala" in the Holy Qur’an, relying on cognitive linguistics and Talmy's theory of motion. The results show that this verb has a descending direction. The agent of all instances of the dynamic verb "anzala" is the same and it is God who causes the descending motion. The descending motion has a subjective function so that the figures in the form of objectified existences travel in the descending direction toward the ground, namely, the earth and the creatures. Additionally, due to its semantic extent and the connection of its marginal and focal meanings, the verb "anzala" depicts a cognitive schema

Metaphor is one of the most common and widely-used cognitive processes that can represent the characteristics of the culture and ideology of a society or a school. According to the theory of conceptual metaphor, in metaphors and their linguistic expressions, cognition and culture are intertwined and become a single conceptual combination. What we call conceptual metaphor is as much cognitive as it is cultural in nature. Accordingly, we assume the formation of conceptual metaphors of the Holy Qur’an as related to the culture of the revelation era and in the present analytical-comparative study, by comparing metaphorical expressions in the poems of the Age of Ignorance and ayahs of the Holy Qur’an, a new explanation of the discourse of the relation between the Qur’an and the culture of the revelation era has been obtained. The Holy Qur’an has used the culture of the revelation era and by changing the target domains of metaphors, it has changed the centrality of the world and its related life in the metaphors of the poems of the Age of Ignorance to the centrality of monotheism in its metaphorical expressions, and has thus established a new culture by drawing a worldview of revelation within metaphors. Another finding of this research was that this theory negates "the revelation being influenced by the culture of the revelation era".

One of the effective methods in attracting the audience's attention is addressing them directly or indirectly, which has been used, among other books, in the Holy Qur’an to influence the audience. This article studies the method used in the Qur’an to address the general public using the words "Al-Nās", "Bani Adam" and "Al-Insān", and it seeks to elucidate this mechanism based on Jakobson's theory of communication. To this end, first, ayahs including these words were identified, which consisted of twenty one ayahs using "Al-nās", five ayahs using "Bani Adam" and two ayahs using "Al-Insān". Then an attempt was made to find answers to the following questions: which factors of communication in Jakobson's theory is more prominent in these ayahs? And how the Qur’anic way of conveying meaning to its general audience is and what does this method have to do with sentence structure? The results show that the orientation of the message in eighty two percent of the cases is towards the listener, which shows the constative role of the ayahs. In seventy eight percent of the ayahs, direct expression has been used for calling the general audience and the frequency of direct expression is twice as many as the indirect one. In direct expression, performative structure is more frequent and when the indirect expression has been used, sentences generally have a declarative structure.

The application of linguistic topics in the study of religious texts including the Holy Qur’an contribute to a systematic reading of them. The pragmatics of language is one of the subfields of linguistics, which is reflected in approaches such as speech act theory. Considering the centrality of purgation in Surah Ash-Shams that depicts the desired value system, the present descriptive-analytical study seeks to identify the different types of speech acts in Surah Ash-Shams and what the results of analyzing these actions and the relationships between them are. The retrieval of speech acts in some of the existing utterances indicates the three-part structure of Surah Ash-Shams. The main message of the surah defines a new value system in the form of declarative act. The commitment act in the form of oaths, which go from the obvious and the tangible to the unseen and the intangible, provides reassurance and an expression of the importance of the subject to speech-seekers. In fact, the speaker of the discourse intends to lead the audience to the action he wants and to adopt a favorable position that is depicted in the face of an unfavorable one through the oaths he mentions. The commitment made in these utterances means that if speech-seekers choose one of the two paths announced in the ninth and tenth ayahs (as the answer to the oath), surely they will be lead to that fate and destiny. In the final ayah, و لا یخاف عقباها"" the realization of the punishment in the form of the declarative act is emphasized.

Layered semiotics as a theoretical perspective that underlies a kind of applied semiotics, by relying on its theoretical foundations such as the study of syntagmatic relations, codes, and intertextuality, provides the basis for extensive analysis of texts such as the Qur’an that are within the context of interactive and multidimensional relationships between sign systems. Drawing on the science of layered semiotics, this descriptive-analytical research analyzed the codes of Surah Al-Masad in order to determine their implicit meanings and reveal the multiplicity of meanings of the semantic layers from their syntagmatic and intertextual relations with them. The research came to the following findings. The action codes show the actions of these characters, which has led to humiliation and fire. The actions are shaped by the only hermeneutic-enigmatic code of the surah that refers to Abū Lahab's wife. Other codes, such as cultural codes, indicate the historical document of this event, and semantic codes signify the attributes of hell-dwellers and their humiliation, while symbolic codes point to the role and interaction of marital relations that with their complementary and illuminating role emphasize not preferring the personal relationships to the rules, inefficiency and eternal losses of the fighters against the path of the truth and the uselessness of wealth and power against the wrath of God

Layered semiotics as a theoretical perspective that underlies a kind of applied semiotics, by relying on its theoretical foundations such as the study of syntagmatic relations, codes, and intertextuality, provides the basis for extensive analysis of texts such as the Qur’an that are within the context of interactive and multidimensional relationships between sign systems. Drawing on the science of layered semiotics, this descriptive-analytical research analyzed the codes of Surah Al-Masad in order to determine their implicit meanings and reveal the multiplicity of meanings of the semantic layers from their syntagmatic and intertextual relations with them. The research came to the following findings. The action codes show the actions of these characters, which has led to humiliation and fire. The actions are shaped by the only hermeneutic-enigmatic code of the surah that refers to Abū Lahab's wife. Other codes, such as cultural codes, indicate the historical document of this event, and semantic codes signify the attributes of hell-dwellers and their humiliation, while symbolic codes point to the role and interaction of marital relations that with their complementary and illuminating role emphasize not preferring the personal relationships to the rules, inefficiency and eternal losses of the fighters against the path of the truth and the uselessness of wealth and power against the wrath of God

Sound repetitions and verbal similarities in the Holy Qur’an have semantic functions. The arrangement and co-occurrence of words in the Qur’anic text is in a way that besides adding musicality to the speech, is more effective in inducing the meaning and can be referred to as "homophony" or "the miracle of musical order". Applying this method of expression gives rise to the creation of a new concept. It also helps to bring together distant, sometimes contradictory notions, together and to achieve some sort of proportionality, cohesion and semantic alliance through formal and musical correspondence. Using the capacity of collocation and homophony in the Qur’an has made it possible for the intended meaning to be more strongly conveyed to the audience and to double the credibility of the concepts. Studies show that utilizing this capacity is more evident in Juz' 30 of the Holy Qur’an, which thus calls for attention and research. In light of the importance of the problem, the present descriptive-analytical study attempts to examine homophony and its semantic effect referred to as the "the miracle of proximity" in Juz' 30 and to provide the readers with the results of the discussion. It is understood that the miraculous arrangement and collocation of words has highlighted the discourse and, with its specific meaning and signified, has implicitly rejected the idea of synonymy in the Holy Qur’an.