RELEVANCE THEORY IN FRIDAY KHUTBA

Authors

  • Emad S. Awad Lecturer, Language Center, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
  • Maram M. Qasim PhD Candidate, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Keywords:

Friday Khutba, Islamic discourse, relevance theory

Abstract

This study seeks to tackle the Muslim Friday khutba (speech) from a Relevance-Theoretic perspective (Sperber and Wilson 1995). Relevance Theory posits that the goal of communication is to maximize the relevance of the phenomena available to language users while minimize the amount of mental or cognitive processing effort. Three Friday khutbas are analyzed in order to explore how the khatibs (preachers) maximize the relevance of the topics in the khutbas to the audience utilizing the least processing effort.

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Published

2019-05-24

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