Journal Article

Fillmore's Commercial Event Frame in Quranic Narrations

C., Sayyaf Ameen K, K., Sabique M

2022

Overview

This paper applies Charles Fillmore's Frame Semantics theory to the analysis of Quranic discourse, with a focus on the use of the COMMERCIAL EVENT frame in Quranic narrations. The author demonstrates how the Qur'an employs trade-related language as a rhetorical device to conceptualize faith, obedience, and divine reward, framing them as contractual exchanges between God and believers. Various examples are analyzed, such as exchanging guidance for misguidance, portraying faith and righteous deeds as a profitable trade, and depicting the concealment of truth or indulgence in worldly desires as a failed transaction. The study highlights how these commercial metaphors provide a conceptual framework in which the believer's relationship with God is understood in terms of profit and loss: God as the buyer, the believer as the seller, with life, deeds, and the hereafter as the currency and returns. The author further explains how the conventional commercial frame is expanded in the Qur'an to include non-material elements such as life, faith, deeds, and divine punishment or reward, revealing the richness of its semantic structure. The paper emphasizes that this analysis goes beyond metaphorical interpretation, uncovering an integrated epistemological and ethical vision, where the trade metaphor becomes a pedagogical tool linking spiritual faith with notions of gain and loss. In conclusion, the study shows that Fillmore's framework offers effective tools for examining Quranic discourse, and that the Qur'an's use of commercial metaphors reflects a religious worldview that ties faith to spiritual profit and eschatological accountability. Abstract Written by Dar AlMandumh, 2025, Using AI

• Publisher: جامعة كيرالا - قسم العربية
• Subject: آيات قرآنية / التجارة الدينية / القرآن الكريم