Contributions of the philosophy of science to juridical semantics

Swearing and its representation in Holy Quran

Swearing can be studied from anthropological, sociological, political, legal, religious and linguistic point of view. Linguists consider swearing as a speech act or performative utterance. Although some of them maintain that the functions of swearing are complex but it can be recognized that an oath is:

-a formal guarantee of truthfulness

-the strongest and the most influential form of speech act

-Stronger than promise

-The representation of punishing power of word

In this paper I will investigate swearing process pointing out its function in legal and medical contexts. But emphasizing swearing as a speech act, so I will show linguistic features of swearing. Considering The Holy Quran, the Muslims divine book, I introduce Quranic swear words and categorise them. The six categories are these:

1. Natural phenomena like sky, moon, star, sun, planet, earth, sea and mount

2. Natural processes like wind, daylight, morning bright, and daybreak

3. Past religious concepts like figtree, olive, Mount Sinai

4. Islamic concepts like promised day, resurrection day

5. Quran under these titles: clear book, wise reading, majestic Quran

6. Others words like pen, soul, witness, evidence
Finally I will mention this point that those Quranic chapters that have swear words at their beginning are different from other chapters. This difference can be justified from text linguistic approach.


Nielsen, Martin
Globale Isotopie, regionale Isotopie, lokale Isotopie: Zur Ermittlung hierarchischer Isotopie als Textanalysemethode/-instrument
Das Isotopiekonzept ist ein Verfahren zur Textanalyse, das seit seiner Entstehung seine Schwäche in der methodischen Stringenz und seine Stärke in der Operationalität hat. Es ist verschiedentlich kritisiert und weiterentwickelt worden, wobei jeweils unterschiedliche Aspekte in den Mittelpunkt gerückt wurden (z.B. Zugehörigkeit der Isotopieketten­elemente zu verschiedenen Wortfeldern, Subjektivität bei der Auswahl, Ausweitung von verbaler auf visuelle Isotopie u.Ä.). In meinem Vortrag werde ich anhand von Beispielen aus Werbetexten einen Ansatz vorstellen, der die Ausdehnung bzw. Konfiguration von Isotopieketten in den Vordergrund stellt. Isotopie soll dabei als ein hierarchisches Konzept aufgefasst werden, bei dem die Ausdehnung von Isotopieketten auf verschiedene Teile der hierarchischen Textstruktur (Texte und Teiltexte verschiedenen Grades) mit entscheidend für ihre Bedeutung für den Gesamttext ist. Für die Isotopieketten unterschiedlicher Ausdehnung bzw. unterschiedlicher hierarchischer Ebene wird die Einführung der Bezeichnungen globale, regionale und lokale Isotopie vorgeschlagen. Es wird festgestellt, dass lokale und regionale Isotopieketten mit Teiltextthemen korrelieren und damit zur Segmentierung/Strukturierung von Texten in Teiltexte beitragen, dass globale Isotopieketten aber diese Funktion nicht erfüllen können. Ferner soll demonstriert werden, wie globale Isotopieketten "latente" Textthemen ermitteln helfen können.


Novodranova, Valentina
Die konzeptuelle Metapher in der medizinischen Terminologie
Die konzeptuellen Metaphern nehmen an der Kategorisierung und Subkategorisierung von Begriffen, Erscheinungen und Gegenstanden teil. In diesen Metaphern werden die Kenntnisse des Menchen von der ihn umgebenden Wirklichkeit akkumuliert.
Der Konzeptualisierung der Wirklichkeit mit Hilfe der Metapher liegen verschiedene kognitive Mechanismen zugrunde, deren Analyse das Vorhandensein einer Korrelation aufweist, und zwar der Korrelation zwischen verschiedenen Typen der metaphorischen Bedeutungen und den kognitiven Strukturen, die ihnen zugrunde liegen.
Das motivierende Kennzeichen der Metapher kann mit der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung zusammehangen, und in diesem Fall ist es explicit ausgedrückt. Die Ahnlichkeit in der Form, in der Farbe u.a.
Das motivierende Kennzeichen kann aber auch mit dem geistigen Bereich zusammenhangen, und diesmal liegt ihm die Ahnlichkeit der Funktionen zugrunde. Hier sind schon die Grundkenntnisse auf dem Gebiet der griechischen Mythologie notwendig.
Oft sind die Grundlagen der metaphorischen Bedeutung implicit dargestellt. Hinter ihnen stehen komplizierte kognitive Strukturen; um diese zu erkennen, mu man über die Berufskenntnisse verfügen sowie über die Kenntnisse, die einen kulturologischen (extralinguistischen) Charakter haben.

Ntshangase, Dumisani
Planned multilingualism? Managing linguistic and cultural diversity in South Africa and the consequences of constitutional multilingualism
South Africa is the only country in the world that has constitutional multilingualism. Within its constitution, South Africa declared eleven languages as official languages. Underpinning this eleven languages policy, is multilingualism.
Over the past few years South African government departments and state organs have been trying to interpret, determing and implement this eleven languages policy and hence implement "multilingualism". Absent in all forms of discourse in multilingualism in South Africa is the defiteness of its parameters. The currently proposed language bill (of which is this author is co-author and copies will be made available for delegates) seeks to establish systems through which multilingualism can be implemented in all government departments and its agents as well as in civil

society and business.

What remains to be discussed and assessed, and what is the key convern of this paper, is whether can mutlilingualism be planned from above. Is this piece of legislation an attempt to invoke a perceived sense of linguistic diversity management from structured systems unlike in normal cases where multilingualism is a phenomenon from below, informed by activities of civil society.
South Africa, like most countries is multilingual. However, there are language acquisition trends which need to inform our understanding of the acqusition of languages other than the own. Observable instances are that a significant number of the urban Black neaveau riche have children who can only speak English and none of their parent's languages. These children grow up as speakers of English, arguably first language speakers of English. The same applies to a significant number of urban white Afrikaans middle class.
How do we define multilingualism? What practices can we observe to inform us about trends in language acqusition between and across a sprectrum of languages? Can multilingualism be planned? Is there any validity in the theoretical assumption that chilcren grow up learning their parents' languages?
These and other will be issues which will be explored by this paper and will serve as a basis for a debate on multilingualism as a concept, is it real or a figment of imagination.


Nuopponen, Anita
Language policies of airlines reflected by their websites
The Internet, and especially the WWW as its best known application, offers better prerequisites for world-wide, inter/crosscultural and multilingual communication than any other media before. In my research I am interested in if these possibilities are being actually utilised, and what are the possible reasons for creating multilingual websites. When discussing the Internet and intercultural communication, one cannot avoid the role of English as an international language. Accordingly, I shall discuss the role of English on the websites, but also study the use of national languages. In this paper, I shall describe and discuss the language choices and localisation degree of the websites made by eight European airlines. Airlines with international operations have always had customers both in their "home" countries and abroad, and so they represent companies for which the WWW seems to present a natural way to enhance their already existing international communication. Against this background it is interesting to see, how they utilise the possibilities to offer multilingual information on their websites. I have been following the changes on these websites during the last four years, and observed on the one hand, how monolingual sites turn into multilingual websites and on the other hand, how, in some cases, the number of languages is being cut down. These and other observations will be reported in the paper.


Okamura, Akiko