نوع مقاله : علمی- پژوهشی

• زبان شناسی
• معارف اسلامی

Discursive Structures in a Selection of Qur’anic Supplications: A Study Based on Hodge and Kress’s Critical Discourse Approach

Faroogh Nemati^1,*, Seyyed Sadral-Din Mahmoudi²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Payame Noor, Tehran, Iran. faroogh.nemati@pnu.ac.ir

^{2 Assistant Professor, Department of Islamic Studies Education, University of Farhangian, Tehran, Iran. ss.mahmodi@cfu.ac.ir}

^{Qur’anic supplications, as part of revelatory discourse, in addition to their devotional and prayerful function, carry layers of ideological meaning and power relations that are represented through linguistic and discursive structures. From this perspective, the language of supplication is not merely an expression of petition and devotion; rather, it constitutes a site for the representation of a particular semantic order and a power relationship between God and humankind, manifested not only in the sphere of prayer but also in the absolute divine authority exercised in response to human need. The present study, drawing on Hodge and Kress’s Critical Discourse Analysis approach, examines how power is represented in Qur’anic supplications. The theoretical framework of the study is grounded in four principal components of this approach, namely naming, nominalization, active and passive constructions, and actional and relational sentences. The research adopts a descriptive-analytical method, and its data consist of a selection of Qur’anic supplications analyzed with a focus on lexical and syntactic levels. The findings indicate that naming strategies—particularly in the use of the Divine Most Beautiful Names and attributes of perfection—play a significant role in foregrounding God’s absolute authority and consolidating the human position of servitude. Likewise, nominalization, by transforming actional processes into abstract concepts, contributes to the naturalization and stabilization of the tawḥīdic semantic order. On the other hand, the predominance of active constructions in attributing actions to God highlights divine agency and activeness, while the use of passive constructions in some cases leads to the backgrounding of the human agent and a focus on the outcome or the divine action in the supplications. Furthermore, the analysis of actional and relational sentences shows that actional sentences, by emphasizing divine acts, represent God’s active power, and relational sentences, by attributing attributes of perfection to the divine essence, serve to ideologically consolidate and legitimize this power. Overall, the linguistic structures in Qur’anic supplications form a coherent discourse in which the power relationship between God and humankind is represented systematically, naturally, and legitimately.}

Keywords: The Holy Qur’an, Qur’anic Supplications, Critical Discourse, Hodge and Kress’s Theory, Representation of Power, Ideology.