A Corpus-Based Analysis of Lexical Bundles in the English Translation of the Holy Qur’an: Structural Forms and Functional Types in the Spotlight (مقاله علمی وزارت علوم)

چکیده

Lexical bundles crucially shape the discourse of specialized registers  such as religious scriptures, yet research on bundles that characterize Islamic sacred texts such as the Qur'an remains scarce. This study conducts a comprehensive corpus analysis to identify prevalent lexical bundles in an English translation of the Qur'an, illuminating their structural forms and functional roles in encoding Islamic theology. A specialized corpus of 166,807 words spanning 114 suras was constructed, with frequent bundles extracted using software and filtering based on predetermined frequency/distribution thresholds. Identified bundles were qualitatively coded for structural realizations and functional types by multiple researchers. Findings revealed a marked predominance of nominal and prepositional phrase bundles systematically lexicalizing and reinforcing core religious concepts and metaphysical tenets. The quantitative prevalence of research-oriented bundles contextualizing theological subject matter over participant-oriented ones projecting stances and experiences, suggests that the Qur’an upholds an epistemological tradition regarding itself as an inviolable corpus encoding divinely revealed spiritual verities. These findings yield profound pedagogical implications since instructional approaches elucidating prevalent bundles as linguistic "building blocks" can foster holistic mastery of authentic Qur’anic expressions among diverse learners while preserving spiritual sanctity. Furthermore, bundle-focused activities cultivate integrated literacies surrounding comprehension, rhetorical articulation, and critical analysis of the linguistic and cultural dimensions of religious texts.