The Semiotic Studies of the Holy Qur'an

Abstract

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication. Qur’an pointed out the semiotics explicitly in several verses, which demonstrated the use of signals to communicate between humans instead of the speech. The Muslim scholars discussed this term for many centuries before it became part of General Linguistics. The problem is that the semiotics Applied Studies have spread to include the Holy Quran, most of the applications did not come with something new to serve the Qur'an. On the other hand, most studies have focused on relationships between signs and symbols, which are sub-labels and may not have an outstanding significance in the text. This paper aims to discuss the feasibility of the semiotics studies and the findings of those applications. Through descriptive and analytical approaches, the article is discussed in three sections; the Semiotics concept, Semiotics textual analysis, and the application of this approach on the Quran texts. After reviewing three applications, the researchers found that these applications have not increased the interpretation of the texts in the Quran, instead, by drawing attention to the semiotics signs, there was a great loss in the essence of the Quranic story and the meanings of the texts in the Quran. Thus, the researchers caution that this approach should not be applied to Quran.