Narrating and Judging: Meta-Qur’anic Speech in Sūrat Ash-Shuʿarāʾ and the Limits of AI

This article examines the gap between human speech as phenomenologically intentional and language as processed by AI through statistical computation. Phenomenologically, speech originates in an intentional movement of consciousness toward meaning, interpreted within a horizon of expectation rather than simply extracted. Algorithmic processing, by contrast, proceeds through lexical frequency and co-occurrence, without an intentional subject. The article asks whether this separation is absolute, or whether a productive connection between the two is epistemologically legitimate. To sharpen the inquiry, it turns to a limit case from the Qur'an, Sūrat Ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q. ۲۶:۱۰–۶۸), staging intradiegetic exchanges (Moses and his Lord, Pharaoh, and the magicians) beneath a recurring extradiegetic voice, addressed to the audience rather than any character: Meta-Qur'anic Speech, comprising a narratorial register advancing the narrative and a verdictive register suspending it to render judgment. This verdictive register, in the refrain at Q. ۲۶:۶۷–۶۸, renders two verdicts (condemnation for Pharaoh's people, glorification for Moses and his companions) while addressing a third, extradiegetic party: the audience. This case serves not as an exegetical end in itself, but as a philosophical instrument for testing what algorithmic processing cannot reconstruct: an act of intentional, dialogically situated judgment irreducible to lexical frequency or co-occurrence.

کلیدواژه ها:

phenomenology ، intentionality ، algorithmic processing ، Dialogism ، Qur'anic discourse ، human agency ، verdictive register ، epistemology