The Representation of ‘Judgment Day’, ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ in The 29th Chapter of The Holy Qur’an: A Semantic study

Abstract

The Holy Qur’an’s language is miraculous as it covers almost all aspects of language and linguistics. The concept of expressions like Judgment day, Heaven and Hell is discussed time to time in so many places in the Holy Qur’an. Thus these expressions were the centers of this study. The aims of this study were twofold: (one) to analyze the frequency of the expressions like Judgment day, Heaven and Hell presented in the 29^th chapter of The Holy Qur’an; (two) to investigate the lexical range used for the concept of Judgment day, Heaven and Hell in the 29th chapter of The Holy Qur’an. The findings of this study revealed that the 29^th chapter talks 101 (51.01%) times about the Judgment day, 49 (24.74%) times about the Heaven and 48 (24.24%) times about the Hell. Moreover, it was also found that there are both direct and indirect references to these expressions. The 29^th chapter of the holy Qur’an talks about these concepts literally and also gives signs of the Day of Judgment, Heaven and Hell pragmatically (in context). Finally the study concluded that the semantic range of these expressions cannot be generalized as there are different levels of the concept of Heaven and Hell.