The Semiotics of the Word 'Jahim' in the Holy Quran

The theory of semiotics is one of the theories many critics and literary theorists pay attention to today. This theory is one of the interdisciplinary approaches in human sciences that uses linguistics, sociology, psychology, and literary criticism to examine signifier-signified relations in objects and is considered an efficient method in analyzing texts. Among various texts, divine texts including the Qur'an, derived from various components, are a source of signs. This article analyzes the text of the Qur'an with a semiotic approach. In order to limit the research, this essay relies on the word "jahim" [hell] and its different aspects in the verses of the Qur'an and examines the influence of the linguistic and situational context on these aspects. Adopting descriptive-analytical method and with the aim of extracting the meanings of "jahim" and their interpretations, this study reviewed the theoretical concepts of semiotics and the lexical and idiomatic meanings of "jahim" and analyzed them in the verses of the Quran. This was carried out by relying on the textual and metatextual position and at "syntagmatic" and "paradigmatic" levels. The findings of this research show that the word "jahim" is repeated 26 times in the Holy Quran. This word, next to "Jahannam", is a central word in the context of words indicating the afterlife punishment, and its repetition in each surah is based on the content and meaning of that surah.