Addressing in the Qur’an: A Study of Insān, Bani Adam, and Nās as Audiences Based on Jakobson's Theory of Communication

One of the effective methods in attracting the audience's attention is addressing them directly or indirectly, which has been used, among other books, in the Holy Qur’an to influence the audience. This article studies the method used in the Qur’an to address the general public using the words "Al-Nās", "Bani Adam" and "Al-Insān", and it seeks to elucidate this mechanism based on Jakobson's theory of communication. To this end, first, ayahs including these words were identified, which consisted of twenty one ayahs using "Al-nās", five ayahs using "Bani Adam" and two ayahs using "Al-Insān". Then an attempt was made to find answers to the following questions: which factors of communication in Jakobson's theory is more prominent in these ayahs? And how the Qur’anic way of conveying meaning to its general audience is and what does this method have to do with sentence structure? The results show that the orientation of the message in eighty two percent of the cases is towards the listener, which shows the constative role of the ayahs. In seventy eight percent of the ayahs, direct expression has been used for calling the general audience and the frequency of direct expression is twice as many as the indirect one. In direct expression, performative structure is more frequent and when the indirect expression has been used, sentences generally have a declarative structure.