Reward and Punishment in Selected Qur'anic Verses: A Pragmatic Study

Abstract

Reward and punishment are two strategies that have been extensively employed in behaviorist educational psychology to increase the motivation of learners in foreign language classrooms. However, scholars have not thoroughly scrutinized these two concepts from a pragmatic angle. Therefore, this study aims at filling this gap by investigating them from a pragmatic perspective. Precisely, it tries to answer the following: What are the pragmatic strategies employed in the selected Quranic ayats to manifest reward and punishment? What are the functions and forms of reward and punishment in the data scrutinized? And how far do reward and punishment contribute to the establishment of a peaceful Islamic community? This study aims at developing an analytical pragmatic model for analyzing reward and punishment and identifying the common pragmatic aspects and strategies used to uncover these two concepts in the data under study. The current study may have some importance for those who are interested in the religious discourse in that it offers a new methodology of analyzing and exploring this kind of discourse.