A Contrastive Rhetorical Analysis of Morality in Religious Contexts of Jesus Christ and Imam Ali (p.b.u.t)

Abstract

Morality is a set of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture. This study deals with morality in English and Arabic religious contexts; namely, Christian contexts from Jesus Christ speeches for English and Islamic contexts from Imam Ali's speeches for Arabic. It investigates the rhetorical construction of morality in these contexts regarding the pragmatic strategies, macrostructure, superstructure, and rhetorical devices applied for such presentation. It develops a model for analyzing the data which includes three samples from each language. The results reveal that there is divergence between Jesus Christ and Imam Ali in the thematic and formal representation of morality in their religious contexts. Jesus' contexts are mostly persuasive in their pragmatic strategy in time Imam Ali's contexts are less direct and based on hinting. The results also show that narrative and argumentative strategies are highly applied by Jesus in his moral religious contexts while descriptive-persuasive is prevailingly applied by Imam Ali.