Conceptual and Textual Chaining in Qur'anic Discourse

Abstract

Chaining is a linguistic mechanism that is concerned with the construction of texts, their textuality and their network of semantic relations. It is concerned with the practical investigation of the constituent units of a given text of any length. This means that we can carry out an in-depth textual analysis of the text at the level of all units of language – morpheme, word, sentence and paragraph levels. Chaining is also concerned with textual progression and processing. When projected onto Qur' anic discourse, chaining produces the Qur'anic text in an upside-down pyramid shape. Thus, there is more reason for the longest suras to be placed at the beginning and the shortest ones at the end. Looking at the upside-down pyramid text, we can appreciate why the Qur'anic message is concluded by monotheism (Q. 112) and divinity (Q. 114), while the wider top surface of the pyramid is the textual environment for lordship (Q. 1) and Islamic legal rulings (Q. 2, Q. 4, etc.), with numerous intervening leitmotifs that are conceptually and intertextually interrelated. Conceptual and intertextual chaining makes the text more accessible to the reader: it is not necessarily characterised by superfluous repetition, but rather is linguistically marked by a high degree of informativity.