Deixis in English Islamic Friday sermons: A pragma-discourse analysis

Although deixis has received increasingly academic attention in linguistic research, its use in sermons, particularly in the Islamic context, has been largely underexplored. Therefore, this paper examined deixis in Islamic Friday sermons from the perspective of pragmatics and discourse analysis. Drawing on Levinson’s Framework, it aimed at analyzing three main types of deixis (personal, temporal, and spatial), focusing on their forms, features, functions, and frequency. The data were a corpus of 70 sermons compiled by the researcher from various online websites. The study employed qualitative and quantitative methods to meet the purpose of the study. The findings revealed that these three deictic types were relatively common in the language of the respective corpus with the personal type being predominant, deictically pointing to different referents whose interpretation was sensitive to the context in which they occurred. As an affectively powerful tool in the corpus, the preachers utilized deixis to serve a wide variety of functions on the discourse and pragmatic levels. In the corpus, deictic expressions worked as a discourse strategy to persuade the listeners by drawing their attention and engaging them in the message of the sermon and to signal and organize the flow of information in the ongoing discourse. They also served to enhance togetherness, intimacy, and politeness between the preachers and their audience. This study is hoped to present a good basis for further linguistic investigation of deixis in other languages and religions to illuminate how deictics work in sermonic discourse.

Mobile money as an interface between finance and livelihood

Digital payment tools and mobile money receive growing attention as a possible tool for alleviating poverty and expanding the benefits of market economies. Especially the Kenyan product M-Pesa gained prominence, since Suri and Jack (2016) published a study according to which it paved a way out of poverty for 2% of the country’s households. However, there are more skeptical notions, too. This debate is now gets a good basis in the long-term ethnographic study by Sibel Kusimba. She endows the conflicting assessments with differentiated reports on the contexts of M-Pesa usage in the Kenyan society.

OBLICI ZAVEŠTANjA U SRPSKOM PRAVU

The subject of this paper is to investigate the influence of the testamentary formalism on the realization of the testamentary freedom. In this context, the author of the paper explores whether the legal conditions for disposing of the property in case of death on the basis of a certain type of testament and the formal requirements for the validity of each of them are defined in Serbian law in such a way that they offer good basis for the realization of testamentary freedom. Having given brief description of the types of testaments in the history of Serbian law, the author continues to research this matter in contemporary Serbian law by classifying the types of testaments based on their principal characteristics. In the central part of the paper, the author aims to determine whether the existing forms of testaments secure the authenticity of the last will of the deceased and legal security and underlines strength and weaknesses of all nine forms of testaments in Serbian law. In concluding remarks, the author argues that the low number of wills as the basis of inheritance, as well as their frequent annulment by court as a result of failing to meet the formal requirements for their validity, point to the fact that there is a need for the reform in this field of law and proposes some de lege ferenda solutions.

Ystävyyttä vai illuusiota?

Sosiaalisen median vaikuttajien seuraajille voi muodostua affektiivisia ystävyyden kaltaisia tunnesiteitä eli parasosiaalisia suhteita seuraamiansa mediapersoonia kohtaan. Sosiaalisessa mediassa on otolliset lähtökohdat parasosiaalisten tunteiden syntymiselle ja kehittymiselle, kun vaikuttajat päästävät katsojat kurkistamaan elämäänsä kuvien ja videoiden välityksellä, kertovat itsestään henkilökohtaisia asioita seuraajilleen ja puhuttelevat yleisöä tuttavalliseen tyyliin.Artikkelissa syvennytään parasosiaalisen suhteen syntyyn ja sitä edistäviin tekijöihin. Tutkimuksen kohteena on sosiaalisen median vaikuttaja Mmiisas eli Miisa Rotola-Pukkila. Tutkimus toteutettiin netnografisella tutkimusmenetelmällä, ja parasosiaalisen suhteen ilmenemistä vaikuttajalle tarkasteltiin seuraajien lähettämistä Instagramin yksityisviesteistä. Lisäksi vaikuttaja kirjasi havaintojaan ja ajatuksiaan parasosiaalisesta ilmiöstä kolmen viikon ajan tutkimuspäiväkirjaan.Tuloksista ilmeni, että ainakin osalla seuraajista saattaa olla hyvinkin vahva parasosiaalinen suhde sosiaalisen median vaikuttajaan. Seuraajien yksityisviesteistä oli havaittavissa monia kuvitellun ystävyyden piirteitä, jotka osoittavat vahvaa yksipuolista tunnesidettä vaikuttajaan. Mmiisas-vaikuttajan lähes kaikki sisältö perustuu itsestäkertomiseen. Tuloksista on nähtävissä, että kaikista henkilökohtaisimmat aiheet edistivät vahvimmin seuraajien parasosiaalisen suhteen ulottuvuuksien ilmenemistä viesteissä.Tulosten pohjalta artikkelissa myös pohditaan, missä mielessä parasosiaalinen suhde on vaikuttajalle tavoittelemisen arvoista, sillä Mmiisas-vaikuttaja rakentaa tiivistä ja lähes ystävyydenkaltaista suhdetta seuraajiinsa yksityisyytensä kustannuksella. Seuraajien vastavuoroinen viestintä ja avoin itsestäkertominen antavat uudenlaista näkemystä siitä, että parasosiaalinen suhde voi olla kuvitellun ystävyyden lisäksi vastavuoroinen ja vahva luottamussuhde vaikuttajan ja yleisön välillä.Avainsanat: parasosiaalisuus, parasosiaalinen suhde, sosiaalinen media, julkisuus, InstagramFriendship or illusion? The appearance of parasocial relationships in followers’ messages to the social media influencerFollowers may develop an emotional, affective, and one-sided friendship-like bond with a social media influencer, also known as a parasocial relationship. Social media creates a good basis for the development of parasocial relationships because followers have an opportunity to peek into influencers’ private lives, while the influencers disclose personal issues and address the audience in an acquaintance-like style.In this article, the formation of parasocial relationships and the elements that foster them are considered. The study aims to investigate an audience’s relationship with Finnish social media influencer Mmiisas (Miisa Rotola-Pukkila). The method used was netnography. The data were collected from private messages, which the followers sent to the influencer on Instagram. The influencer Mmiisas also kept a research journal during the three-week research period.Results revealed that at least some of the followers had a strong parasocial relationship with the influencer. In the private messages, there were many features of imagined friendship that showed a strong one-sided relationship with the influencer. Nearly all of Mmiisas’ content is based on self-disclosure. The results showed that highly personal content seems to foster the characteristics of followers’ parasocial relationships in their messages.The article discusses how beneficial a parasocial relationship is for an influencer. For example, Mmiisas seemed to build a strong friendship-like bond with her followers by sharing pieces of private information. The followers’ reciprocal communication and self-disclosure create the perspective that a parasocial relationship may also be a confidential relationship between an influencer and his or her followers.Keywords: parasociality, parasocial relationship, social media, publicity, Instagram

A Német Szövetség váltójogi jogalkotása és annak hatása az Osztrák Császárságra és a Magyar Királyságra

Among the 19th century’s European legislative and codification processes nowadays’ jurisprudence is happy to highlight the creation of civil codes as a milestone in the development of civil law, however, we must not forget the flourishing of another, at least as important branch of private law: the commercial law. In parallel with the growth of overland and sea trade, with increasingly diversified commercial relations, commercial transactions developed, which may have served as a good basis for the development of private law. This study is the first in a series of commercial law history studies and presents the sources of different laws on bills of exchange in the German territories and the harmonizing legislation of the thousand-faced German Confederation, as well as its impact on the Austrian Empire, such as the Austrian law on bills of exchange and the Hungarian Kingdom's vicious, but ultimately rewarding independent legislative aspirations.

Participation of the Battalions of the 11th Marching Regiment in the Battles for the Control of the Fortified Positions in the Area of the Town of Machin in January 1917

The study is devoted to little-known facts related to the participation and contribution of the troops of the 11th Marching Regiment to the victory achieved in the battles for control of the heavily fortified area in the Machin. The data presented come to fill the gap in the researches regarding the participation of the marching formations and in particular of the 11th Marching Regiment in the battles as part of the 3rd Army. The presented information helps to clarify and supplement the general picture of the events on the front, by revealing specific details of the course of the hostilities, which so far have not fallen within the scope of attention of the scientific community. Also, a good basis is created for the formation of reasonable conclusions about the significance of the achieved victory. Archival materials have been put into circulation, which reveal new facts about the battles in the Dobrudzha region. The presented brief information about the marching regiments and the combat history of the regiment helps to clarify the nature and purpose of these units, taking into account the fact that the available information about them is more than modest and insufficient. The presented data are entirely based on materials from the State Military Historical Archives – Veliko Tarnovo.

Theological Cosmological Concept of the Purpose of Perfect Person

According to the Bible, Eternal Nature, the dark abyss, and the changeable Nature constitute the Infinite Cosmos (Genesis 1:1). Eternal Nature consists of the Perfect Creative Substance and the water element. The perfect Creative Substance conquers the dark abyss, revitalizing the water element. The perfect Creation Substance expands the space of the variable Nature in Infinite Space. The perfect Creative Substance is called God. God is a good basis for harmony. He works for the benefit of the Harmony of the changeable Nature. God created a hierarchy of angels and man in a spiritual image and likeness. God has armies of bright angels. People are taller than angels. "Jesus answered them: Is it not written in your law: I said, you are gods (John 10:34). I said, you are gods, and the sons of the Most High are all of you (Psalm 81:6). " The arguments of the highest dignity of man before angels are: the embodiment of the Son of God into human nature; He made his son the heir to everything through which he created forever; The son sat on the Odessa throne of greatness at an altitude; about man it is said that he was created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1, 26). Man is capable of creativity, and the most diverse, and needlework, and intellectual, and musical, and poetic, which is related to him with the First Form - God, the Creator. I betrayed my heart in order to examine and experience wisdom everything that is done under heaven: this difficult occupation God gave the sons of men to exercise in him (Ecclesiastes 1:13). The works of the Lord are great; they are eager for all who love them (Psalm 110:2). After the general resurrection, the Creator will form a creative human society for cosmological service. For to the man who is good before him, he gives wisdom and knowledge and joy (Ecclesiastes 2:26).

Improved prediction of behavioral and neural similarity spaces using pruned DNNs

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have become an important tool for modeling brain and behaviour. One key area of interest has been to apply these networks to model human similarity judgements. Several previous works have used the embeddings from the penultimate layer of vision DNNs and showed that a reweighting of these features improves the fit between human similarity judgments and DNNs. These studies underline the idea that these embeddings form a good basis set but lack the correct level of salience. Here we re-examined the grounds for this idea and on the contrary, we hypothesized that these embeddings, beyond forming a good basis set, also have the correct level of salience to account for similarity judgments. It is just that the huge dimensional embedding needs to be pruned to select those features relevant for the considered domain for which a similarity space is modeled. In Study 1 we supervised DNN pruning based on a subset of human similarity judgments. We found that pruning: i) improved out-of-sample prediction of human similarity judgments from DNN embeddings, ii) produced better alignment with WordNet hierarchy, and iii) retained much higher classification accuracy than reweighting. Study 2 showed that pruning by neurobiological data is highly effective in improving out-of-sample prediction of brain-derived representational dissimilarity matrices from DNN embeddings, at times fleshing out isomorphisms not otherwise observable. Pruning supervised by human brain/behavior therefore effectively identifies alignable dimensions of semantic knowledge between DNNs and humans and constitutes an effective method for understanding the organization of knowledge in neural networks.

E-Government in the Republic of Croatia

The goal of this article is to present the development and use of e-government services in the Republic of Croatia. So far, there has been no systematic presentation of Croatian e-government, despite the strong momentum in the development of new electronic services in the last few years. Therefore, this article will be a good basis for further research on Croatian e-government. The article shows the historical development of e-government in Croatia, the current situation and the number of available services in and outside of the e-citizens system (which is the central place of access to Croatian e-government), and the messages that citizens can receive in their user inbox. The intensity of use of all e-government services and the intensity of the use of credentials, depending on their level of security, are shown. A survey was conducted among e-government users about their preferences for using credentials depending on the level of security they offer and ease of use. The results were compared with data on the intensity of use of individual credentials.

Development of a Gas Chromatography-Time-of-Flight Method for Detecting Glucosinolate Metabolites and Volatile Organic Compounds in Kimchi

This study examined the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and metabolites of glucosinolate (GLS) contained in kimchi and analyzed GLS using myrosinase. The analysis was conducted using gas chromatography-time of flight (GC-TOF), and VOC and the metabolite quantities were detected and analyzed. Based on 22 samples, tests were conducted, and 12 metabolites and 52 VOCs were found. When the detected metabolites were compared in general, the rate of isothiocyanate, which is well known for its anticancer effects and various other activities, was the highest. A total of 52 VOCs, including 15 aliphatic hydrocarbons, 7 acids, and 6 alcohols, were detected by GC-TOF. Therefore, the analytical methods provide a good basis to examine VOC and GLS metabolites; furthermore, the methods are of great help to secure excellent kimchi and evaluate its quality.