Politeness Strategies in Qur'anic Communication: A Pragmatic Exploration

Politeness plays a fundamental role in achieving effective communication by promoting respect, cooperation, and social harmony. While politeness has been extensively examined in interpersonal communication, its application to Qur'anic discourse remains underexplored. This study investigates politeness strategies in Qur'anic communication from a pragmatic perspective through integrating Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory, Leech's General Strategy regarding Politeness, Speech Act Theory, and Islamic communication principles derived from the Qur'anic concepts of Qaulan Sadidan, Qaulan Ma'rufa, Qaulan Layyina, Qaulan Karima, Qaulan Maysura, and Qaulan Baligha. Employing a qualitative document analysis approach, selected Qur'anic verses representing commands, prohibitions, advice, invitations, narratives, and dialogues were analysed through thematic and pragmatic discourse analyses. The results show that the Qur'an systematically employs positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record strategies to communicate divine guidance while preserving human dignity, promoting reflection, and promoting voluntary acceptance rather than coercion. Directive speech acts are consistently mitigated through kindness, wisdom, compassion, and respectful language, demonstrating that politeness functions not simply as a linguistic strategy but as an ethical and communicative principle. Furthermore, the study shows that Qur'anic communication integrates pragmatic effectiveness with moral responsibility, extending conventional face-saving models by grounding politeness within divine principles and goals. The proposed integrated framework contributes to Arabic pragmatics, Qur'anic discourse studies, and Islamic communication by delivering a more in-depth understanding of politeness in sacred discourse and laying the starting point for future empirical research.

Qur'anic communication; politeness strategies; pragmatics; speech acts; Islamic communication; Qur'anic discourse.

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