A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS ANALYSIS OF THE DISCOURSE OF ENGLISH FRIDAY SERMONS

On every Friday, in every mosque in the world, Muslims gather for Friday sermons in answer to the call: “O you, who have believed, when [the adhan] is called for the prayer on the day of Jumu’ah [Friday], then proceed to the remembrance of Allah and leave trade. That is better for you, if you only knew” (Quran, 62:9). Typically, the Friday prayer is shortened by half to accommodate the presentation of the Friday sermon; this emphasizes the importance of the sermons. The present study is a discourse analysis that examined 12 sermons delivered on the first Friday of every month in 2016 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The sermons are unified throughout the nation, which means that this study covers the whole nation for the entire year of 2016. The study was conducted utilizing Appraisal, Periodicity, and Identification theories as proposed by Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL), which was first proposed in the 1950s. More specifically, the study focuses on the Attitude System of Appraisal theory to investigate how meanings are constructed in the sermons. The application of these theories revealed correlations between the 12 sermons in terms of goals, distribution of Attitude System, and main topic referents. The 12 sermon were also categorized into five groups based on factors such as: (a) attitude system; (b) goal of the sermon; (c) Hyper-Theme; and (d) main topic entities. These groups or genres were related to: (a) description of an appropriate behavior, (b) ethical principles emphasized in Islam, (c) challenging issues in current events, (d) religious practices and teachings, and (e) national speech and the role of congregants in their community, society, and position as citizens of their countries. Keywords: systemic functional linguistics (SFL), appraisal theory, periodicity theory, attitude system, identification theory, Islamic Friday sermons, discourse analysis, religious speech, interpersonal meta-function, textual meta-function, United Arab Emirate