She Has Many Effective Roles to Play: Embracing Woman Tenderly in the Quranic Discourse

Abstract

This small-scale study explores the extent to which woman is being embraced gently in the Quranic discourse. It aims at identifying the potential roles the Quranic discourse assigns for women to play. As the study utilizes corpus linguistics, a concordance of key words in context (KWIC) to list the Quranic discourses reporting the roles is used. The study exclusively applies a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to the data collected. It inclusively builds on Fairclough's (2010) and van Dijk's 1(998) models of analysis to describe the roles assigned for woman to play, interpret the properties given to the role players and explain the forces lying behind the Quranic selection and use. It has been found that woman in the Quranic discourse plays a considerable number of significant human, social, leading, ethnic, and ethical roles. As a human being, woman is supposed to enable peacefulness of mind. When a mother, she follows her intuition to protect her own family. If a fruitless wife, she tends to fight against racial discrimination and genocide. As a field worker, she avoids direct competition with her counterpart, the male, and struggles for doing her job properly and patiently. As a leader, she is exceptionally a peacemaker. And as a witness, she always tells the truth tactfully. Consequently, it has been concluded that woman in the QD is honored or rather promoted to a good position. Finally, the study implicates for pedagogy and research on Muslim woman.