A Linguistic Analysis of the Qur’anic Narrative of “the Companions of the Cave” in Sura ‘Al-Kahf’ (The Cave [18]:9-26)

Abstract

Narratives play an essential role in human communication and culture. A well-tailored narrative, whether it is a short story or a long novel, is considered a powerful tool in influencing people’s thoughts, beliefs and therefore their behaviours. The glorious Qur’an is rich in narratives of various types. This paper focuses on studying the parable of “The Companions of the Cave” which is a very prominent narrative among the Muslim community. The present work is mainly concerned with studying the linguistic features of this parable. The investigation, presented in this paper, tackles all levels of linguistic analysis including: the phonological, lexical and morphological, grammatical, semantic, and stylistic levels. The investigation reveals a plethora of linguistic features in such short story. One of the prominent findings of this research is that the stylistic features are plentiful than the other linguistic ones given the brevity of the story. It is worth mentioning that different modes of narration have been used in this significant parable such as authorial tone, direct speeches as well as dialogues. Furthermore, the scene description as well as the employment of semantic characteristics such as synonymy, antonymy, hyperbole, hyponymy and figures of speech allow the reader/listener to construct vivid images of the story. The paper also highlights the significance of employing the various phonological features on top of them are the auditory components such as rhyme and internal-rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance to engage the audience, grab their attention and facilitate the memorisation of the story.