Discourse Analysis of Laughter in Verses and Narrations

Laughter as one of the spiritual and psychological needs of man plays a role in various aspects of his life, however, the question arises whether laughing is discussed in Islam or according to the view of some who consider Islam to be a religion of crying, laughter is not discussed. The methods of historical and descriptive semantics and then quantitative and qualitative analysis and discourse analysis have been used to answer this question: how is laughter explained in verses and traditions? This research in the field of historical semantics shows that the word Zahk had a broad meaning before Islam, which included the meaning of laughing, wondering, and mocking. And from the point of view of descriptive semantics, the word laughter, and its related words, by using the rule of the context of the semantic core of laughter and the systematic connection of its components, show that laughter has different meanings according to its companions, some of which are praiseworthy, such as happiness and laughter in heaven and some are reprehensible like mockery. Also, this research has shown that the principle of laughter is not intrinsically reprehensible, but it has limited laughter to appropriate conditions, times, and places.