Interpreting Quranic Rhetorical Questions as Indirect Speech Acts: Part-II

Abstract

This paper is a sequel to Gul and Ahmed (2024). The second paper in the series also presents a qualitative analysis of a set of rhetorical questions in the Holy Quran. The complete data set consists of Thirty-three rhetorical questions that start with exactly same syntactic phrase. While Part-I offered analysis of first seven instances, the current part analyzes subsequent thirteen (8-20) rhetorical questions, and the remaining thirteen (21-33) questions will be analyzed in Part-III. Methodology and theoretical framework of Part-I (Gul and Ahmed, 2024) guided Part-II and Part-III. Considering rhetorical questions as indirect speech acts, we explore differences and similarities in the illocutionary force of different questions in the data set. The study establishes that rhetorical questions serve as a range of illocutionary acts and every act is governed by its content, context, and addressee. Moreover, the findings show that the questions share marked similarities in their power for engaging readers emotionally.  These similarities amplify their argumentative effect and psychological impact. The study found minor differences also.