A Critical Discourse Analysis of Surah Yusuf (AS) Using Norman Fairclough's Model

Studying meaning and finding signified concepts in literary works by means of signifiers and textual surface structures have always been the concerns of literary critics. Discourse analysis, having numerous and different approaches, tries to shed light on the reciprocal relationships between language and society. More specifically, discourse analysis relying on linguistic forms and signs, unearths the ideology behind texts in an attempt to look at the social functions of the language. Thus, discourse analysis is a text-based approach analyzing inner and outer aspects of texts. Norman Fairclough's model, one of the most well-known discourse analysis models, attempts at exploring the dominant power in the society where any given literary work has been produced through implementing the three stages of description, interpretation, and explanation and while explicating the relations between the internal and the external aspects of a certain text. Accordingly, the present descriptive-analytical study aimed at looking into the story of Yousef (AS) drawing on Fairclough's model. The findings of the study show that there is an irrefrangible cohesion and link between the language and the external and social contexts of the Qur'anic story of Yusef (AS), and this story has been formed, in terms of textual pinnacles regarding reasons, emotions and discourse, proportional to the setting of the story in Canaan and then in the palace of the Egyptian Pharaohs.