A Lexical Pragmatic Analysis of Quranic ‘Rain’ and ‘Clouds’ Concepts

Abstract

This study deals with lexical pragmatic perspective not only due to its new birth but also for being a bridge that links two vivid linguistic fields that are pragmatics and semantics. On one hand, pragmatics tackles speech elements and speaker’s disclosed meaning. On the other hand, semantics is framed as the components of conceptual structure that can be represented in a certain proposition. Jackendoff (1990) comes with the concept that pragmatics and semantics, respectively, investigate how the meaning is constructed in a text regarding the speaker’s attention and the inherent meaning of words and phrases. This study examines the workability of lexical pragmatic analysis in analyzing certain Quranic lexemes concerning clouds and rain. It attempts to apply the four-leveled lexical pragmatic mutual adjustment method of analysis to selected Quranic verses highlighting both lexical and adjusted meanings of the words ‘clouds’ and ‘rain’ in the verses in question. It sums up to prove the applicability of the adopted model of analysis to the selected genre. Adjusted meaning can be interpreted either by specifying or generalizing it to fit its context.