ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the major linguistic and stylistic prototypical features of Qur’anic Arabic. This is an in-depth empirical investigation based on a thorough textual analysis of Qur’anic discourse. This discussion, therefore, can be taken as a platform for the distinction between Qur’anic Arabic and modern standard Arabic. However, such a distinction falls outside the scope of the present analysis. Similarly, this discussion is of value to Arabic and English comparative linguistics and to any other European or non-European linguistic studies. The features provided in this chapter can also be employed in Qur’anic corpus linguistics. The features of Qur’anic discourse will cover the different levels of language at both the micro and macro levels of analysis. It is worthwhile to point out the following:
The examples taken are either independent āyahs or part of an āyah. In both cases, however, each example provided constitutes a meaningful grammatical and stylistic structure.
The sentence-initial conjunctive element (wa – and) is not included in the example because this particle occurs in almost every Qur’anic āyah at the initial position. Thus, it is not considered as part of the linguistic structure of the sentence in this linguistic analysis.
Due to the fact that Arabic and English are linguistically and culturally different languages, the translation of the Qur’anic examples may not convey the same Arabic linguistic structures, and most importantly, the English conjunctive particles may not provide the same grammatical, semantic or stylistic functions in the translated examples.
By prototypical features of Qur’anic discourse, we mean that each feature has occurred many times throughout the Qur’anic text. However, some of the features given in the discussion have occurred more than a dozen times.
Due to lack of space, only three or four examples can be provided.
The present discussion also accounts for the stylistic feature of shift at the sentence level and the macro text level, and the perlocutionary effects of Qur’anic syntactic structures. According to Searle, ‘meaning consists in part in the intention to produce understanding in the hearer’ (Searle 1975:60). He 8emphasises the text producer’s (interlocutor) ‘general powers or rationality and inference’ (Searle 1975:61). The text producer ‘means what he says, but also means something more’ (Searle 1975:59). It is worthwhile to define three notions relevant to the present discussion and to subsequent chapters:The locutionary act: The words of a statement,
The illocutionary act: The force behind the words uttered, and
The perlocutionary act: the effect of words on the hearer/reader.
(Ogiermann 2009:7)