Characteristics of the Character's Speeches in the Quranic Stories

The speech exchange is an act of communication through which a message is transferred from the speaker to the hearer and so depending on the audience and the message being expressed, it takes the name of dialogue or monologue. Having been taken from the Greek word dialogos, dialogue consists of two parts: logos meaning “word” and dia meaning “within”. In some cases, dialogue lacks a external audience, i.e. the person tells his thoughts to himself or tells his thoughts to a person who does not show an immediate reaction or response towards his speech. Thus, we can regard all prayers and lyric poems as different kinds of monologue. Accordingly, this paper investigates the “dialogue” in some of the stories of the Holy Quran both from the view point of the speaker and the hearer as well as the subject matter. Although the main goal of this paper is to discuss the role of dialogue, some monologues are also examined in these stories.