Document Type : Original Research Paper
Authors
1
Assistant Professor, Sociology of Law, Department of Law, Faculty of Jurisprudence and Law, Baqir al-Ulum University, Qom, Iran
2
Associate Professor, Sociology, Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Governance, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The theory of social understanding of texts was first introduced by Mohammad-Javad Mughniyah in his book Fiqh of Imam Sadiq (AS) as a novel approach to deriving rulings from juristic evidence, and Martyr Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad-Baqer Sadr, by providing a rigorous formulation of it, considered this approach a turning point in the history of Islamic jurisprudence. The subject of discourse analysis, meanwhile, involves examining any semiotic phenomenon, including texts, speech, communicative events, and so on. The most significant common ground between discourse analysis and the theory of social understanding of texts can be considered the domain of “language.” According to linguists, meanings do not exist independently in the mind; rather, meaning resides in language, and to access meaning, one must understand the structure of language. In the social understanding of texts, it is also emphasized that the emergence of speech is not fully realized through literal, situational denotation alone; rather, the social implications of speech—that is, the rational presuppositions within the context in which the text is issued—must be considered, and a final interpretation is achieved through the combination of situational and social denotation. In this article, using an interdisciplinary approach and descriptive-comparative method, the social understanding of texts from the perspective of Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad-Baqer Sadr is examined alongside discourse analysis from the perspectives of Foucault, van Dijk, and Fairclough. Subsequently, the role of employing discourse analysis and the development of interpretive tools in jurisprudential cases is discussed.
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