A Pragmatic Study of Sermon's Importance in AL-Imam Ali ibn Al-Hussain’ Speech

Abstract

This study is concerned with pragmatic structure that composes the sermon of Imam Ali ibn Al-Hussein (A.S.) in the palace of Yazid Bin Muawiya in Syria after the Battle of Karbala (61 A.H.). This study highlights a problem of the religious speeches since there is a gap in the pragmatic analysis of such genre that entails a more comprehensive precise of pragmatic scrutiny. Consequently, it aims to reveal embedded meanings in a sermon delivered by the Imam to describe the sermon that relies mainly on qualitative and quantitative analysis by using eclectic model consisting of Hymes’s (1974) speech events and Yule’s (2000) presupposition. It shows the most common types of presupposition employed in the Imam’s speech to support the pragmatic structure. The important conclusions of this study are: Speech events and certain types of presupposition are used in specific ways to achieve the Imam’s aims to consolidate the pragmatic structure. For persuasive purposes, the commonly types used in this sermon are the existential and structural presupposition to give the Imam’s speech high degree of accuracy that represents his linguistic originality. There is a lack of using other types of presupposition because the Imam avoids employment of such types which are not adopted highly in this sermon since his aim is to show the status of the Prophet's household and warning of the bad consequences for attendants. The interrelationship between speech events and presupposition comes from the variation in the situation and audience.