A Systemic Functional Approach to Chapter 36 (Yasin) in the Quran

Despite numerous research conducted by Muslim scholars, the need to study the Quran in the framework of a linguistic theory makes itself felt more than any other time. The need becomes particularly important when considered in light of the fact that the necessary theoretical tool to research into texts of different types is made available by modern approaches such as structuralism and functional linguistics. The present study aims to investigate chapter 36 of the Quran in light of major concepts of Halliday's Functional grammar. To Halliday, grammar consists of the three components of transitivity, mood, and thematic structures responsible for fulfilling the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions of language respectively. Language, thus, through these structures serves to represent events, encode interpersonal relations and make a text. Research into the three structures in chapter 36 of the Quran, apart from revealing the strengths of such a theory in accounting for such a text, would present the text in question as consisting of a set of speech acts and dialogues all similar in the mood structure.