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Empowering Women: A Multi-perspective Discourse Analysis of Women’s Dignity and Equality in Qur’an

Received: 14 July 2016     Accepted: 1 August 2016     Published: 22 August 2016
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Abstract

According to Qur’an, God’s divine merit-demerit system never allows for any biased treatment towards men or women. Dignity instead is what God has granted on all children of Adam. The present article, hence, sought to trace back women’s dignity and equality to the discourse of Qur’an working on a sample of 11 Surahs. The discourse analysis was based on combinatory perspectives of text linguistics, pragmatics, and rhetoric. The results revealed that the most salient marked discoursal devices of women’s equality and dignity were the techniques such as parallelism, anaphoric repetitions, juxtaposition of the believers’ attributes, emphatic negative propositions. In addition, the sometimes situated hierarchical pattern of relationship between men and women were not indicative of any unfair evaluation of either gender. Instead, the yardstick was the amount of the believers’ efforts in the way of God’s “forgiveness and reward”.

Published in International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation (Volume 2, Issue 4)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11
Page(s) 33-42
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2016. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Equality, Dignity, Proposition, Parallel, Qur’an, Rhetoric

References
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  • APA Style

    Vida Dehnad, Azar Hosseini Fatemi. (2016). Empowering Women: A Multi-perspective Discourse Analysis of Women’s Dignity and Equality in Qur’an. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation, 2(4), 33-42. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11

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    ACS Style

    Vida Dehnad; Azar Hosseini Fatemi. Empowering Women: A Multi-perspective Discourse Analysis of Women’s Dignity and Equality in Qur’an. Int. J. Appl. Linguist. Transl. 2016, 2(4), 33-42. doi: 10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11

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    AMA Style

    Vida Dehnad, Azar Hosseini Fatemi. Empowering Women: A Multi-perspective Discourse Analysis of Women’s Dignity and Equality in Qur’an. Int J Appl Linguist Transl. 2016;2(4):33-42. doi: 10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11,
      author = {Vida Dehnad and Azar Hosseini Fatemi},
      title = {Empowering Women: A Multi-perspective Discourse Analysis of Women’s Dignity and Equality in Qur’an},
      journal = {International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation},
      volume = {2},
      number = {4},
      pages = {33-42},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijalt.20160204.11},
      abstract = {According to Qur’an, God’s divine merit-demerit system never allows for any biased treatment towards men or women. Dignity instead is what God has granted on all children of Adam. The present article, hence, sought to trace back women’s dignity and equality to the discourse of Qur’an working on a sample of 11 Surahs. The discourse analysis was based on combinatory perspectives of text linguistics, pragmatics, and rhetoric. The results revealed that the most salient marked discoursal devices of women’s equality and dignity were the techniques such as parallelism, anaphoric repetitions, juxtaposition of the believers’ attributes, emphatic negative propositions. In addition, the sometimes situated hierarchical pattern of relationship between men and women were not indicative of any unfair evaluation of either gender. Instead, the yardstick was the amount of the believers’ efforts in the way of God’s “forgiveness and reward”.},
     year = {2016}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Empowering Women: A Multi-perspective Discourse Analysis of Women’s Dignity and Equality in Qur’an
    AU  - Vida Dehnad
    AU  - Azar Hosseini Fatemi
    Y1  - 2016/08/22
    PY  - 2016
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11
    T2  - International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
    JF  - International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
    JO  - International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation
    SP  - 33
    EP  - 42
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2472-1271
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijalt.20160204.11
    AB  - According to Qur’an, God’s divine merit-demerit system never allows for any biased treatment towards men or women. Dignity instead is what God has granted on all children of Adam. The present article, hence, sought to trace back women’s dignity and equality to the discourse of Qur’an working on a sample of 11 Surahs. The discourse analysis was based on combinatory perspectives of text linguistics, pragmatics, and rhetoric. The results revealed that the most salient marked discoursal devices of women’s equality and dignity were the techniques such as parallelism, anaphoric repetitions, juxtaposition of the believers’ attributes, emphatic negative propositions. In addition, the sometimes situated hierarchical pattern of relationship between men and women were not indicative of any unfair evaluation of either gender. Instead, the yardstick was the amount of the believers’ efforts in the way of God’s “forgiveness and reward”.
    VL  - 2
    IS  - 4
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Field Department of International Campus, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

  • Department of English Language and Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

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