Sacred texts and religious discourse

Problem statement: Nasir al-Molk mosque, which is described in architectural writing resources as a distinct mosque, has become a tourism center in Shiraz for many years and seems to have lost its devotional function. This distinction from the mosques with a more historical dating in Shiraz results in the assumption that the architectural features of this mosque are the reason for this distinction. Characteristics that come with the change or emphasis of common patterns in traditional mosques, and field observations and reviewing the documents of related resources include the lack of elongation of the prayer hall perpendicular to the axis of the qibla, the aberration of the perception of the qibla, the maximum decorations in the space of worship and the likeness to non-Muslim patterns. In order to examine these characteristics that cprayer hallenge the historic originality, it is necessary to refer to non-timely religious criteria, which goes beyond this feature, to ensure the devotional function of the mosque in an optimal way.
Research objective: Hence, the main purpose of this research is to judge and critique the distinctive features of the design of the Nasir al-Molk mosque in Shiraz based on religious criteria.
Research method: In the present article, using the verses of the Qur’an and narrations, especially those who refer to the construction of Masjid al-Nabi(The prophet’s Mosque) by the prophet (pbuh), as criteria for criticism, the judgment of these four attributes in the mosque of Nasir al-Molk will be considered.
Conclusion: The findings show that the division of the prayer hall into the eastern and western parts, which contradicts the policies of the prayer hall design from the point of view of Islam, as well as the aberration from the axis of the qibla alongside the maximum decorations that damage the experience of the worshipers, and finally use the signs and patterns of imported architecture in the Qajar era prove that the effect of these features is to enhance the mosque’s exhibitive capabilities and, hence, reduce its worshipability.

The unprecedented development of the Internet in the contemporary world and its increasing influence in people’s life produce, inevitably, an impact on religious practice. This paper is interested in analysing the manners Internet, and web-based religious communication affects
adherentsNew Religious Movements’ public discourses and the manner these groups’ construct their religious messages to attract more adherents, via the Internet. We intend to demonstrate that communication through Internet positively influences the way NRMs construct their religious messages to attract new followers, that NRMs’ public discourse is influenced by their self-positioning as cultural and religious alternatives, and also by extensive Internet usage in disseminating and constructing their religious discourse. As Internet impacts most religious groups’ communication we want to underline those elements specific to NRMs.'
communication. To depict the specificity of Internet’s impact on NRMs’ discourse we’ll first underline some general transformations within religious life and practice induced by long-term social changes, like modernization or globalization. These generate deep cultural
transformation on people’s mentality, and religion become, in Western societies, rather a cultural product (Beckford), a projects of the autonomous self (Hoover) dominated by a turn to subjective-life (Woodhead).
Mediatization of religion (Hjarvard) generates interesting phenomenons, like “banal religion” (Hjarvard), “hyper-religion” (Possamai) or “cultural religion” (Albanese), while the Internet creates many posibilities of action on a religious field for any individual. From challenging traditional religious authorities to creation of a new churchless religion, the Internet allows, especially to New Religious Movements, to attract more followers using the Internet. After these demarcations we’ll underline the specific effects of Internet on NRMs’ discourse. As these groups are much interested in attracting new followers and being more persuasive to outsiders, their public discourses become less traditional, less theological and more flexible, more marketized and follower-oriented.

Quranic discourse can greatly benefit from European theoretical linguistics. However, until now, the value of European theoretical linguistics to the investigation of Qur’anic discourse has been overlooked. This is the first book on Qur’anic linguistics, which accounts for the different levels of linguistic and stylistic analysis. Hinged upon modern European theoretical linguistics, it covers a wide range of topics such as: syntactic structures, ellipsis, synonymy, polysemy, semantic redundancy, semantic incongruity, semantic contrastiveness, selection restriction rule, componential features, collocation, cyclical modification, foregrounding and backgrounding, pragmatic functions and categories of shift, pragmatic distinction between verbal and nominal sentences, morphosemantic features of lexical items, context- sensitive word and
phrase order, and vowel points and phonetic variation.

Although Amazing Grace has become a popular song associated with the English speaking culture, the notion of GRACE itself remains mysterious and vague.
The problem is that being an abstract notion, grace is difficult to understand and describe even for theologians. This problem may be overcome by conceptual metaphors which help us conceptualize and understand the abstract reality [Lakoff, Johnson 2003/1980/; Kövecses 2010/2002/]. John Henry Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons [1834--1843] constitutes a set of eight volumes of sermons preached in the years 1828-1845 in St. Mary’s Church in Oxford by an outstanding Anglican philosopher, theologian, writer, and academic of the Victorian era, who later converted to Roman Catholicism. The article focuses on the cognitive-linguistic aspects of identification and classification of the various conceptual metaphors for GRACE in Newman’s sermons. The metaphors are illustrated with examples of the lexical correlates found in the analyzed material. In his sermons, Newman conceptualizes grace metaphorically either as different kinds of INANIMATE THINGS: A CONTAINER, AN INSTRUMENT or MEANS, A GARMENT, A TREASURE and A GIFT, as A TRADED COMMODITY, A LIQUID, FOOD AND DRINK, and A BUILDING, as A PLANT, or as A PERSON: A KING, AN INHABITANT of a human being or the Church, as AN OPPONENT or ENEMY, as A GUIDE IN A JOURNEY, and as A PARENT. Additionally, GRACE is metaphorically viewed in the studied work as POWER, as A WAY IN A JOURNEY, and as LIGHT.

Although actors on both sides are driving this
conflict, it is today’s Salafists who are proving to
be the dominant standard-bearers of anti-Shi‘a discourse—
not taking into account the violent jihadists,
whose popular appeal and staying power have
yet to be demonstrated despite some spectacular
and headline-grabbing territorial gains and terrorist
acts. The Salafist movement has shown itself adroit
at exploiting opportunities to advance its rhetorical
and theological positions amid the religious
re-examination and outright contestation among
religious subgroups sparked by the recent Arab
uprisings and their successful challenge to existing
institutions of power in the region.

"* Preface *:

What makes laws endure or change? When a law changes, how does a tradition of legal interpretation justify the innovation in light of its legal precedents and foundational texts? What is the function of the reasons given for laws? What relationship does law bear to social values? These interrelated questions fall under the heading of philosophy of law, yet it is mainly through the study of history that they can be probed. Answering these questions in different cultural and historical settings is a prerequisite for developing a general theory of law, for it makes distinguishing universal elements from culturally-specific parameters possible. In particular, a culturally specific feature of Islamic law is its religious character. One may ask, therefore, whether the fact that Muslim legal traditions invoke sacred authority makes an essential difference to the way the questions posed above are answered. In other words, does sacred law operate in a fundamentally different way from secular law? This book explores these questions through a study of the largest legal tradition in Islam, namely the Hanafi school of law.

The book begins by creating a general model of juristic decision making that describes any legal tradition, Islamic or not, in terms of a number of parameters. It does not presuppose that all legal traditions are identical, for the parameters in the model may vary from one tradition to another.  [continued]"""""""

En este trabajo nos proponemos analizar las variaciones en el empleo del lexema “pueblo” durante el proceso de redacción del documento Iglesia y comunidad nacional (1981). Para ello nos detendremos en la demanda elaborada por el grupo productor al episcopado para que éste asumiera un discurso “populista”, como modo de instaurar discursivamente una identidad social configurada, simultáneamente, por la experiencia del peronismo en la Argentina y la renovación eclesiológica del Concilio Vaticano II. Para ello, argumentamos, los redactores construyeron una representación del pueblo como sujeto político y propusieron una identificación entre el locutor episcopal y el objeto discursivo así construido. Complementariamente, observamos el rechazo sistemático y puntilloso de esta demanda en los “modos” o correcciones realizadas por los obispos en el cuarto borrador. El análisis genético se complementa con un examen de los efectos producidos en ciertos ámbitos de recepción del texto, que nos permitirá observar cómo, a pesar del control episcopal, el efecto de discurso populista llegó a ser percibido por algunos sujetos que rechazaban precisamente esa articulación entre catolicismo posconciliar y peronismo.

An analysis of historical understanding of how anatomy was used or appropriated in the Qur'an. Classical scholars of the Qur'an understood the anatomical terms in terms of faith, imagery, poetry, and other figurative ways to ensure the faithful would comprehend the rich diversity of usage.

C’est de cette réalité que je pars. Beaucoup plus que la dimension poétique vue comme invention je vais considérer la dimension poétique comme survivance en parallèle avec l’idée que la « religion » est la première tentative spéculative de l’homme, religion qui n’est fondamentalement que production du, dans et par le langage, et donc nécessairement poétique.
Je vais donc choisir d’étudier :
1- Les racines anciennes « indo-européennes » de notre patrimoine poétique et religieux.
2- La dimension poétique des textes fondateurs de nos trois religions sémitiques. Je serai très bref sur ce sujet.
3- La dimension poétique des textes sacrés  ou d’inspiration religieuse du Moyen Âge (Stabat Mater et Rutebeuf)
4- La dimension poétique des textes et œuvres musicales diverses d’inspiration religieuse avec Monteverdi (Les Vêpres à la Vierge) et J.S. Bach (Passion selon Saint Jean)
5- Cela me ramènera nécessairement aux Psaumes de David et aux Evangiles. Nous pourrons alors poser la question de la pérennité et du dépassement de ce patrimoine.
Ma méthode est dictée par une conception linguistique fondamentale construite au cours des années par un commerce intense avec les œuvres et les artistes dans ces domaines culturels et leur mise en abîme avec des cultures non dérivées du creuset sémitique.

A leitura de textos religiosos produzidos entre os séculos XVI e XVIII, com vistas à catequese e à ação cristã, não pode ser desassociada também da finalidade de “entreter o espírito”. Neste artigo, examinamos como se deu essa problemática em Portugal, colhendo exemplos principalmente de textos hagiográficos, que, nesse período, ombreavam com obras ditas profanas no que diz respeito à leitura para o deleite.

В статье анализируется семантика назидательности и побудительности в речевых жанрах проповеди и церковного послания православного церковно-религиозного дискурса. Выявляется доминирование косвенной реализации побудительности, которая эксплицируется преимущественно через средства выражения деонтической, аксиологической и оптативной модальности. Описываются ведущие ком-муникативные стратегии-оценочности, побудительности и призыва. Ключевые слова: церковно-религиозный дискурс, назидательность, речевой жанр, проповедь, цер-ковное послание, побудительность, оценочность, модальность.

In this article, I embark upon the discursive interplay between biblical and ‘gnostic’ exegesis. Inspired by a case study on Genesis 2-3, I will elucidate and question some of the boundaries that separate and complicate scholarship on both canonical and gnostic text sources. The article consists of three sections. In the first section, I confer my understanding of ‘canonical interpretation’, explaining how it has framed and convoluted the study of non-canonical text corpora from the first centuries CE onwards. I explicate how the study of some of these corpora, collected under the discursive header of ‘Gnosticism’, has been heavily burdened by the implication that they only served to convey protest exegesis or oppositional readings of canonized biblical texts.

The article is a tentative attempt to reconstruct the functional-semantic model of nagradzać (Eng. award/reward) by analyzing its propositional structure, focusing on the predicate-argument structure. The research presents data gathered from a pilot study (120 sentence units) collected from NKJP – Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego (Eng. National Corpus of Polish). The analysis concentrates on the description of argument positions: subject, beneficiary, means and reason of awarding portraying the issues regarding each category. The article also depicts the so called explicative patterns isolated from the award predicate, revealing not only dominant structures generated by users of Polish, but also the complexity and subtlety of that particular predicate. Słowa kluczowe: semantyka, składnia semantyczna, struktura predykatowo-argumentowa, schematy eksplicytacyjne, semantyka nagradzania/gratyfikacji Describing the meaning of any linguistic unit is, to a certain extent, based on the reconstruction of the phenomena and situations (in a general sense – designatum), to which it relates. This article similarly attempts to identify the phenomenon of NAGRADZNIE (Eng. AWARDING/REWARDING) taking into account the way it is linguistically illustrated through sentence constructions, founded upon the predicator nagradzać/nagrodzić (Eng. award/reward). This article presents the results of a pilot study, the data for which was excerpted from 1 The nature of the semantic category of nagroda and nagradzać in Polish reveals its complexity and subtlety in relation to the translation and finding of an equivalent term in English. Due to the fact that nagradzać encompasses the English verbs award, reward, receive a prize – all these lexemes will be applied in the article.

In this paper, we present experiments using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program, a ‘closed-class keyword’ (CCK) analysis and a ‘correspondence analysis’ (CA) to examine whether the Scientology texts of L. Ron Hubbard are linguistically and conceptually like those of other religions. A Kruskal–Wallis test comparing the frequencies of LIWC category words in the Scientology texts and the English translations of the texts of five other religions showed that there were eighteen categories for which the Scientology texts differed from the others, and between one and seventeen for the other religions. In the CCK experiment, keywords typical of each religion were found, both by comparing the religious texts with one another and with the Brown corpus of general English. The most typical keywords were looked up in a concordancer and were manually coded with conceptual tags. The set of categories found for the Scientology texts showed little overlap with those found for the others. Our CA experiments produced fairly clear clusters of texts by religion. Scientology texts were seen at one pole on the first factor, with Christian and Islamic texts at the other. It appears that, in several ways, the Scientology texts are dissimilar to the texts of some of the world's major religions.

The construction of meanings in relation to language and religion: a study into the Mahabharata
Sridevi Sriniwass1

1University of Malaya, Malaysia

Citation Information: International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Volume 2014, Issue 229, Pages 131–158, ISSN (Online) 1613-3668, ISSN (Print) 0165-2516, DOI: 10.1515/ijsl-2014-0021, July 2014
Publication History

Published Online:
    2014-07-31

Abstract

The current article is an investigation into language in a narrative religious text, specifically how the semiotic resource of language is used to construct meanings in relation to language and religion. The religious text chosen for the study comes from two retold versions of the world's largest story, “the most cherished of all Indian classics, the Mahabharata” (Dharma 1998: 1). The article will attempt to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the elements of generic/schematic structure in the text? (2) How are the elements of generic/schematic structure related to language? (3) How is language used to bring out the various religious themes in the texts? The generic/schematic structure shows that the story chapters appear to have been organized the same way. The discourse phases are signaled by two incidents, two complications, two reactions and two resolutions in the story. Ideational meanings are embodied in both congruent and metaphoric ways. Catenative verbs are used to form a chain of events. Mood and comment adjuncts are used to provide interpersonal meanings of appraisal and judgment. Textual adjuncts are used to provide thematic prominence and contribute to the semantic continuity of the text whereas circumstantial adjuncts of time, place and manner serve to enhance the meanings expressed by choice of process types and participants. In the story certain actions acquire symbolic meanings. It is through these symbolic meanings that religious, cultural and spiritual ideologies come to be construed. Examples of symbolic meanings explicated from the texts are the depiction of Ganga's divinity, the curses and blessings of a sage and how religious merit is obtained. Detailed analysis of the role of language in expressing meanings related to sacrifice, renunciation and the fulfillment of vows in religious discourse may enhance cross-cultural understanding and may be of interest to language practitioners and spiritualists.

A leitura de textos religiosos produzidos entre os séculos XVI e XVIII, com vistas à catequese e à ação cristã, não pode ser desassociada também da finalidade de “entreter o espírito”. Neste artigo, examinamos como se deu essa problemática em Portugal, colhendo exemplos principalmente de textos hagiográficos, que, nesse período, ombreavam com obras ditas profanas no que diz respeito à leitura para o deleite.

In this paper, we present experiments using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program, a ‘closed-class keyword’ (CCK) analysis and a ‘correspondence analysis’ (CA) to examine whether the Scientology texts of L. Ron Hubbard are linguistically and conceptually like those of other religions. A Kruskal–Wallis test comparing the frequencies of LIWC category words in the Scientology texts and the English translations of the texts of five other religions showed that there were eighteen categories for which the Scientology texts differed from the others, and between one and seventeen for the other religions. In the CCK experiment, keywords typical of each religion were found, both by comparing the religious texts with one another and with the Brown corpus of general English. The most typical keywords were looked up in a concordancer and were manually coded with conceptual tags. The set of categories found for the Scientology texts showed little overlap with those found for the ot...

In this paper I compare the citation and recitation of "mystical" texts in two traditions: the academic scholarship of mysticism; and the underground metal music subgenre of drone metal. Taking the band Om's 2012 album Advaitic Songs as a case study, I investigate the presentations, receptions and interpretations of religious texts that take place in the sound recording, lyrics and artwork, and then in online reviews and comments by listeners. Suggesting a distinction between uses of citation and recitation, I outline possible implications for the study of religious experience.