On coherence in Quranic discourse : a linguistic analysis

Abstract EN

The reader may assume that adjacent sentences in a given running text are coherent, logically ordered, conceptually related, semantically homogeneous, and, most importantly, enjoy continuity of the text pivotal thought.

However, this may not be so since the prerequisites of coherence are varied and the criteria are language and culture specific.

Cohesion plays a pivotal role in the realisation of coherence, in particular, and the texture of the text, in general.

In Quranic Arabic, some of the linguistic mechanisms through which the text producer aims to attain coherence do not occur in other languages.

Thus, the contribution to knowledge and originality applies to the current work.

The plugging of a research gap in this field of linguistics can be demonstrated in the need to explain the prototypical discourse characteristics of Quranic Arabic.

This is represented in the attainment of coherence through (i) morphological relatedness, (ii) the text producer’s selection of a grammatical category such as verb/noun/adjective that is fundamental to the central idea of the statement, (iii) the selection of a specific comparative adjective, (iv) the selection of a specific comparative God’s epithet, and (v) the selection of a specific sentence-final God’s couplet epithets.

For the purpose of this paper’s analyses, a sample of Quranic lexical items has been selected from different sūrahs (chapters) and are provided with a discourse-oriented analysis with a view to their attainment of coherence.