Applying Discourse Analysis to Define the Stylistic Features of Qurʾānic Genres

Abstract

This article presents an inquiry into the identification of the stylistic features characterizing genres in the Qurʾān. It explores how discourse organization and the articulation of marking foreground and background information convey the intended meaning and topics of Qurʾānic genres and impact their style in terms of lexicon and syntactic structure. Three types of information are shown to emerge in Qurʾānic genres that are captured in the relationship between syntactic form and discourse function: main foreground information, complementary foreground information and background information. Whereas the main foreground information in all genres has its own identifiable syntax, the complementary information is diverse. The background information in all types of genres shares some common thematic, pragmatic and linguistic features which can easily be identified.