A Semantic Analysis of Estehza Emphasizing Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Relations

Word research is one of the methods used in thematic exegesis for unearthing and eliciting the Quranic theory, which has recently attracted a lot of attention particularly in linguistics and semantics because it can, through analyzing words in the Quranic semantic network, provide new meanings of words that although in cases show overlaps with prior meanings belonging to networks outside the Quranic one, in others it can present meanings that are innovative and specific to the Quranic perspective. Such new meanings lead to the semantic expansion of words. The present study intended to analyze the word 'estehza' using a descriptive-analytical method and drawing on philological studies as well as analyzing syntagmatic and paradigmatic patterns of words.
The results indicated that the word 'estehza' has semantic associations with some creedal and moral concepts and this has been the cause of the semantic expansion of this word in the Quran. Although the lexical dictionary meanings 'mockery' and 'disparaging' are also used in the Quran, words find new meanings in the light of monotheism, which is the main axis of Quranic ayahs. As a result, new compound phrases such as ridiculing (estehza) Allah emerge. The syntagmatic placement of estehza with kofr (infidelity) and nifaq (hypocrisy), and its replacement with sakhera and zaheka turned out that we have two types of approved and disapproved estehza in the Quran. While the former is meant by Allah to train and inform the believers of the disbeliever's ridicule, hence a kind of punishment for them, the latter signifies the infidel and the hypocrite's belittlement and unconcernedness. These semantic relations were highlighted, clarified semantically, and beautified structurally through literary subtleties and artistic imagery from the logical to the sensible, and other literary and phonetic devices. This indicates the coherence and consistency between words and meanings.