A semantic analysis on the English translation of Surah al Ra’d by Marmaduke Pickthall

Semantics is one branches of linguistics studying about meaning. This research is focused on analyzing the English translation of surah Al Ra’d by Marmaduke Picktall by using semantic theory. Al Ra’d is one surah in the Holy Qur’an which consists of forty three verses and discusses generally about Tauhid, resurrection, and Prophet hood.

Related on the background, the study aims to answer two following questions. The first is what kinds of meaning are used in the English translation of “Surah Al Ra’d” by Marmaduke Pickthall and the second is what messages are involved in this surah.

This research was conducted using descriptive qualitative method, because the data of this study are in the form of sentences or words of surah Al Ra’d. The steps of data collection are reading and understanding the translation of "Surah Al Ra’d " by Marmaduke Pickthall. Then, he selected the data that are related to the problems of the study. At last, the data were arranged systematically in accordance to the problems of the study. To analyze the data, he presented the data, interpreted the data and drew the conclusion.

Based on the result and discussion of the data, it can be concluded that there are
three kinds of meaning involved in this surah, namely lexical, sentential and discoursal meanings. Lexical meaning is concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words, that contains with denotation, connotation, synonymy, antonymy, ambiguity, polisemy, hyponymy, homophony, and homonymy. Sentential meaning can be defined as a group of words that forms a statement, command, exclamation or question, and usually contains a subject and predicates, and in writing begins with a capital letter and ends of the mark (.,!?). While, discoursal meaning is a term used in linguistics to refer to a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence dealt with discussion. Furthermore, message is something that the author wants to convey to the readers. In many works, the message can be concluded as moral, religious and social message. In this study, the messages found are dominated by moral and religious messages.

The researcher hopes that this study can give a contribution for the readers, especially the students who are interested in semantic study. Furthermore, it is hoped for further researchers to conduct similar topic of this study, which not only focuses on kinds of meaning but also on the other aspect of semantic