The Efficiency of Halliday's Theory in Delineating the Textual Consistency of the Sūras of the Qur ān

One of the significant approaches in linguistic studies of the text is Halliday’s functionalist theory of textual consistency. The functionalist textual cohesion consists of a collection of textual relations that connects an element of a sentence to the elements of previous sentences through lexical, grammatical, or semantic relations. Following the teachings of this school, a group of the Muslim contemporary Qur’an researchers have examined the relation of the verses in the Sūras of the Qur’an and announced that with respect to the factors of cohesion mentioned in this theory, the textual consistency of each of the Sūras of the Qur’an can be well-proven. In this writing, after introducing Halliday’s functionalist theory of textual cohesion and stating the factors of textual cohesion from the point of view of this theory, six critiques on this theory have been mentioned. Although the critiques mentioned on the theory of functionalist cohesion do not mean that the cohesion are by no means used in analysis of text and speech, given the features of the functionalist theory of textual cohesion and the critiques mentioned on it, it is concluded that this theory is not sufficient for analysis of all dimensions of textual cohesion and enjoyment of the entire factors of textual cohesion only elucidates the linear relation of the sentences of one text with each other.