Interest in second language (L2) speech comprehensibility, or listeners’ perceived ease or difficulty of understanding a given utterance, has seen continual growth since Munro and Derwing's (1995) seminal publication in Language Learning. While recognizing the body of knowledge that has developed in the 25 plus years since Munro and Derwing's study, in the present paper we look to the future as we consider what an active and informative research agenda might look like for the next 10–15 years. In this regard, we propose four primary areas of future research, including a need to: (1) extend inquiry beyond a primary focus on L2 English speech, (2) explore comprehensibility more thoroughly as a social construct, (3) investigate the effects of more targeted task manipulations, and (4) delve deeper into the effects of comprehensibility-oriented instruction. We additionally discuss the need for more replication in L2 comprehensibility research while also promoting several scholarly disciplines we feel can greatly inform future research, such as task-based literature.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision withdrawing federal constitutional protection for reproductive rights, the United States is in the throes of federalist conflicts. Some states are enacting draconian prohibitions of abortion or gender-affirming care, whereas other states are attempting to shield providers and their patients seeking care. This article explores standard arguments supporting federalism, including that it allows for cultural differences to remain along with a structure that provides for the advantages of common security and commerce, that it provides a laboratory for confined experiments, that it is government closer to the people and thus more informed about local needs and preferences, and that it creates layers of government that can constrain one another and thus doubly protect rights. We contend that these arguments do not justify significant differences among states with respect to the recognition of important aspects of well-being; significant injustices among subnational units cannot be justified by federalism. However, as nonideal theorists, we also observe that federalism presents the possibility of some states protecting rights that others do not. Assuming that movement among subnational units is protected, those who are fortunate enough to be able to travel will be able to access rights they cannot access at home. Nonetheless, movement may not be readily available to minors, people without documentation, people with disabilities, people who lack economic resources, or people who have responsibilities that preclude travel. Only rights protection at the federal level will suffice in such cases.

As biological organisms, we age and, eventually, die. However, age’s deteriorating effects may not be universal. Some theoretical entities, due to their synthetic composition, could exist independently from aging—artificial general intelligence (AGI). With adequate resource access, an AGI could theoretically be ageless and would be, in some sense, immortal. Yet, this need not be inevitable. Designers could imbue AGIs with artificial mortality via an internal shut-off point. The question, though, is, should they? Should researchers curtail an AGI’s potentially endless lifespan by deliberately making it mortal? It is this question that this article explores. First, it considers what type of AGI is under discussion before outlining how such beings could be ageless. Then, after clarifying the type of immortality under discussion and arguing that imbuing an AGI with synthetic aging would be person-affecting, the article explores four core conundrums: (i) deliberately causing a morally significant being’s death; (ii) immortality’s associated harms; (iii) concerns about immortality’s unequal assignment; and (iv) the danger of immortal AGI overlords. The article concludes that while prudence requires we create an aging AGI, in the face of the material harm such an action would constitute, this is an insufficient reason to justify doing so.

Intermediaries are communication experts who facilitate communication between individuals with communication needs and the criminal justice system. In executing the role, intermediaries interact with police, lawyers, judges and other criminal justice professionals. But is the intermediary a professional in its own right? This article argues that a more useful question to ask is whether intermediaries engage in what Andrew Abbott terms ‘professional work’. It reveals how the role tussles for legitimate control over its work tasks through the staking of ‘jurisdictional claims’. Intermediaries do so through the performance of ‘boundary work’ which involves the construction and negotiating of boundaries that mediate interaction. This article presents findings from thirty-one in-depth, semi-structured interviews with intermediaries and judges in England and Wales and Northern Ireland. It concludes that the future of the intermediary role and its work depends largely on the type of ‘jurisdictional settlement’ which its practitioners seek to carve out.

Studies on Indonesia–China relations have emphasized the central role of Indonesia's domestic politics in shaping its foreign policy toward China. However, there has been little discussion on the context in which and the extent to which internal struggles for power have contributed to shape Indonesia's China policy. Contributing to such a discussion, this article specifically focuses on the roles of Indonesian Islamist groups in affecting Jakarta–Beijing ties. It examines their political maneuvers in responses to the attitudes and policies of two governments, the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014) administration and that of Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (2014–), on China-related foreign policy issues. Both Yudhoyono's and Jokowi's governments display the same friendly attitude toward China. On the South China Sea issues, nevertheless, Jokowi's government adopts tougher measures against China's maneuvers. Despite Jokowi's implementation of such policy, the Islamists put up considerable resistance to his China policy, even compared to his predecessor. This article finds that the extent of power sharing between the Islamists and the regime in power determines the former's responses toward the latter's China policy. This suggests that in the management of bilateral relations, the Islamists are not a hindrance per se in Indonesia–China relations.

This study explores the link between stylized forms of language and the construction of social identities in performance in the Beijing hip hop community. It focuses on the indexical process by which rappers rely on existing characterological figures and local linguistic variables in Beijing Mandarin (i.e. rhotacized syllable finals, lenited retroflexes, interdentalized dental sibilants, and fronted palatals) to construct hip hop affiliated identities. A variationist analysis provides evidence of style-shifting between two generations of Beijing male rappers, who employ these socially salient linguistic features to different degrees, but always in a semiotically coherent package, in their performance. The analysis further demonstrates how the rappers maintain street credibility through a cultural alignment between hip hop and local social types. By examining the indexicality of these variables, the study highlights the interplay of hip hop ideology, local linguistic features, and local social types in stylistic practices and personae construction. (Hip hop, indexicality, iconicity, performance, Mandarin Chinese)*

In 2015, Douglas NeJaime and Reva Siegel identified complicity-based conscience claims as a subcategory of religious liberty claims, which feature objections to generally applicable laws based on religious convictions that harm third parties. Here, we observe that Muslim-Americans have filed or joined amicus curiae briefs in support of litigants on both sides of the recent complicity-based conscience cases of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado (2018), Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021). This divergence of legal views within the Muslim-American community points to a broader rift in society generally toward issues involving the navigation of identity and faith in the context of American liberalism. In this article, we show that opposing arguments by Muslim-Americans in these complicity-based conscience cases presuppose two different conceptions of liberalism: (1) liberalism as the pursuit of broad religious, cultural, and value pluralism (modus vivendi), and (2) liberalism as the pursuit of social cohesion, assimilation, and fraternité among diverse constituencies (vivre ensemble). Muslim-Americans who advance a modus vivendi vision of liberalism base their arguments mainly on the view that Islam and other minority religions involve specific beliefs, doctrines, and moral injunctions regarding, inter alia, rules of personal conduct in society that deserve distinctive legal protections. Muslim-Americans who support a vivre ensemble conception of liberalism prioritize the uniform enforcement of civil rights laws over religion-based objections and, in doing so, seek an overlapping consensus between their beliefs and prevailing conceptions of expansive civil liberties.

The HOLLYWOOD sign is arguably the world's most famous language object. Emblematic of prestige and cultural capital, the sign can be found not just in Los Angeles, but in citations all over the world. Beginning with the history of its valorization, HOLLYWOOD is shown to emanate symbolic value through a set of enregistered semiotic features. Drawing upon a set of globally sourced citations of HOLLYWOOD, the circulation and stratified bundling of size, emplacement, alignment, typeface, and color indicates how the citation of language objects is mediated by political economy. A process of diffuse citation is further observed, in which the quotation of language features is not overt, but the source of emanation is still tangible, revealing HOLLYWOOD as the source of a global linguistic-semiotic register. As this register circulates in citations overt and diffuse, language objects are revealed as key sites for the reproduction of commodity values. (The Hollywood sign, language object, citation, enregisterment, global emblems, recontexualization)*

This article addresses the beginnings of the twinning relationship between Coventry and Kiel to introduce and exemplify the idea of ‘urban internationalism’ as a new lens onto urban histories of town twinning initiatives and a contribution to the historiography of British town twinning. Focusing on paradiplomatic initiatives by municipal officials, religious dignitaries and other citizens in Coventry and Kiel, the article examines the role that cities played in British–German reconstruction and reconciliation in the period from the end of World War II until the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.

This article provides a fresh perspective on the history of East German town twinning in the early era of détente. While previous studies have analysed East German town twinning solely as an instrument of the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) to establish paradiplomatic relations in Western Europe, I explore the dynamic inter-relation between global, national and local actors and the ambiguities of urban détente. I reveal the importance of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (Deutsche Städte- und Gemeindetag, DStuG), the East German association of municipalities, which crucially shaped the East German concept of urban détente through practising trans-local exchange. The role played by the DStuG was backed by the United Towns Organization (UTO), a non-governmental organization founded in 1957 whose aim was to form a global network of cities beyond the East–West divide. In 1960, the DStuG joined the UTO as a member and consciously used its new position to expand its scope and improve its national status through actively working on the conceptualization of urban détente. However, the conflicts between the East German foreign ministry and the UTO grew bigger, resulting in the marginalization of the DStuG and town twinning in the SED’s concept of détente. These conflicts encouraged the UTO to redefine its global approach.

The article reflects upon the observational practices and methods developed by the early exponents of ethology committed to naturalistic field study and explores how their approaches and techniques influenced a wider field of popular natural-history filmmaking and photography. In doing so, my focus is upon three aspects of ethological field studies: the socio-technical devices used by ethologists to bring birds closer to them, the distinctive observational and representational practices which they forged, and the analogies they used to codify behaviour. This assemblage of elements included hides or screens from which to watch wild birds without disturbing them, optics to extend human vision, pens and paper to sketch and fix patterns of behaviour, watches to record timings, photography to capture action and freeze movement, and illustration and photographs to visualize behaviour. Carried through natural-history networks, the practices, methods and theories of ethologists like Huxley and Tinbergen influenced popular natural-history filmmaking and photography more broadly from the 1940s, driving a behavioural turn in these cultural practices. This popularization of the ‘ethological eye’ was further facilitated by the convergence of socio-technical devices, forms of observation and dramatization in the work of the early exponents of naturalistic field studies of birds and the popular filmmakers.