Linguistic Interpretation of Sūrat al- Aṣr

The contemporary linguistic achievements have taken the literary interpretation of the Holy Quran into a new stage. At present the Halliday's systemic-functional theory has received attention by many linguists. This article aims at acquainting the interpreters and Quran researchers with the new linguistic methodology in relation to understanding religious texts. Based on this theory and with a linguistic method, the writer has interpreted Sūrat al-‘Aṣr and presented new points on the semantics of this sūra. These points include: man's love relation to God and other human beings; the reflection of the world of the speaker, the listener, and the reader; the calculated priority and delay of the words; the peaks and valleys of the cadence of the words; mysterious bond between the old and the new datum; utilizing various types of cohesion and continuous relation of concepts and meanings.