Persuasive Strategies in Imam Al-Hassan’s (p.b.u.h) Preaches

Abstract

             Language is a means of communication through which one can transmit one’s ideas and thoughts. The way of handing over convincing ideas can be adhered to through the use of specific strategies in certain genres. Preaching is an example of these genres where speeches are presented to influence people on a particular occasion with the aim of convincing them to accept or abandon an idea or a course of action; expressly to exhort an officious or tiresome manner. This specific issue, i.e. persuading people through preaching has not been given enough scholarly investigative attention from a pragmatic perspective. Thus, this study attempts to bridge this gap in the literature. To do so, it scrutinizes the homilies delivered by one of the infallible people in the Islamic culture: Imam Al-Hassan (peace be upon hem) who is used to utilizing various strategies in his preaches to persuade the populace to accept moral issues that they can take benefit from their life to gain salvation.               This study attempts to identify the pragmatic persuasive strategies used by Imam Al-Hassan (peace be upon him) in his preaches, among which are the pragma-rhetorical devices to convince people to accept ideas and arguments discussed by him.     To accomplish the above aim and test the above hypothesis, specific preaches of Imam Al-Hassan’s are pragmatically analyzed by means of a model developed for this purpose.