A Pragmatic Study of Curse in Al-Sayyeda Zeinab's Sermon to Yezid

This file is no. 19 of the Al-Ameed Book Series, 'Sayyida Zaynab's Speech: From Language to Impact', issued by the Al-Ameed International Centre for Research and Studies at the Al-Abbas Holy Shrine, Karbala. Its English paper is by Prof. Dr. Riyadh Tariq Kadhim Al-Ameedi of the University of Babylon and Zina Abdul-Hussein Khudhair.

The paper treats la'n (cursing) as a speech act - an appeal to God to punish a wrongdoer - and analyses how Sayyida Zaynab curses Yazid in her sermon at his court in Damascus. Using Little's three stages of curse (introduction, operative, conclusion) and Searle's speech acts, it traces supplication, complaint, threat, rhetorical questions and parallelism, quoting the sermon in Arabic with English translation.

The volume also holds two Arabic papers: a speech-act reading of her Kufa and Damascus sermons by 'Adil Nadhir Biri al-Hassani and 'Imad Talib Musa, and a study of 'the Other' in the sermons by Rahman Ghirkan 'Abadi. Of interest to students of linguistics and of the post-Karbala sermons.