Approaches to the Investigation of Speech Genres in the Qur'an

Abstract

This contribution provides a methodological overview of the investigation of speech genres in the Qur’an. Drawing on Biblical form criticism, the ethnography of speech, and Bakhtin's theory of speech genres, as well as recent studies devoted to the form criticism of the Qur’an and earlier Qur’anic studies scholarship on individual genres, it points out the importance of generic conventions for the interpretation of Qur’anic passages, highlights the types of evidence on which investigators ought to focus in the investigation of genres, and identifies oversights and pitfalls that have affected earlier scholarship and should be taken into account in future work. Close attention must be paid to generic labels, meta-generic discourse, repeated elements, conventional features of individual genres such as introductory formulas, concluding formulas, and characteristic words, phrases, and constructions. The discussion highlights the ways in which texts that belong to individual genres are embedded in suras or longer passages within suras and points out that the Qur’an not only draws on pre-existing genres but also modifies and transforms them.