Audience Demands as a Strategic Maneuver in Imam Al-Hassan's Speech after his Truce with Muaawiya

Abstract

Strategic maneuvering is an extended version of pragma-dialectics. It manifests itself in three basic aspects, p. topical potential, audience demands, and presentational devices. These aspects are interrelatedly used with each other. The aspect of audience demands, which is the concern of this study, indicates the use of cultural, conventional and common-sense knowledge of the audience’s preferences, following particular presentational devices as strategies. Thus, in their attempts to reasonably and effectively persuade the audience, speakers resort to this strategy in their endeavor to win the audience support. The use of this strategic manoeuvre in this concern seems to have not received its due scholarly attention from a pragmatic angle, particularly in religious discourse. Hence, this study attempts to bridge this gap in the literature via scrutinizing the speech of Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) grandson, Imam Al-Hassan son of Ali Bin Abi Talib (PBUT). This speech is considered as one of the most notable speeches in the Shiite theology. Imam Al-Hassan (PBUH), as the caliphate of Muslims, delivered this speech after the truce which was held between him and Muaawiya, the leader of the Umayyad people. To unravel the pragmatic features of strategic maneuvering in this speech, the current work addresses fulfilling audience demands by using certain presentational devices in this speech. In so doing, the study attempts to find out the persuading manifestations and rhetorical effects that influence the audience and change their attitude. To achieve those aims, the study appeals to Emeren and Houtlosser’s (2002) model for the pragmatic analysis of the speech in question. This analysis yields certain findings among which is Imam Al-Hassan’s (PBUH) exploitation of specific cultural issues related to Muslims as pragmatic strategic maneuvers that fulfill their demands.