Applying Halliday and Hassan’s Theory in the Textual Cohesion of Nahj al-Balaghah (Case Study of Sermom 181)

Halliday and Hassan's theory of textual coherence is one of the important categories of contemporary linguistics, which, unlike purely constructivist theories, pays significant attention to linguistic structures in a situational context. In their opinion, text cohesion factors are placed in three categories: grammatical, lexical, and conjunctive. This research investigates three dimensions of coherence in the 181st sermon of Nahj al-Balagha. As a result, grammatical coherence with a frequency of 44% has the largest share of coherence in the sermon. Lexical coherence with a frequency of 43 and conjunctive coherence with a frequency of 13% are in the next place of importance, respectively. This abundance shows that the prominence of Imam Ali's words, in addition to their deep content, is due to the intelligent use of linking factors resulting from this conference and thinking about its meanings and themes, revealing the greatness of its position.