Microstructural Translation of Al-Baqara (Q.2): A Novel Glimpse at Its Linguistic and Ideological Structure

Abstract

This study aimed to find out what statistically significant words and sentences constituted the verses of the second surah of the Holy Quran (HQ), i.e., Al-Baqara (AB). To this end, the microstructural approach of schema theory (MICAST) was employed and the whole AB was translated into English by consulting a number of English translations of the HQ. The surah was then parsed into its single and phrasal words on the basis of the concepts they represented, i.e., schemata. Based on their linguistic functions, the schemata were classified into three domains, i.e., semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic. The constituting genera and species of domains were also specified through codification to run statistical analyses. The results showed that the AB consists of 11489 and 1549 schema tokens and types, respectively. The four schema types “andâ€, ‘theâ€, “you†and “Allah†had the highest tokens because they appeared 734, 713, 444, and 282 times in the AB, respectively. In their unique combination with each other schema tokens have produced 697 sentences and 286 verses. Statistical analyses showed that not only the linguistic domains but also their constituting genera and species differed significantly from each other, indicating that the schemata were deliberately chosen to express concepts at word and verse levels. The results are discussed from both linguistic and ideological perspectives to address “Allah†as a unique Islamic name having specific attributes brought up in AB.