Ngugi wa Thiong’o was a leading postcolonial literary voice, advocating for the centrality of indigenous languages. His central argument is that since language was a fundamental instrument of colonisation, it is equally integral to the process of decolonisation. This has resonated among intellectuals and writers from formerly colonised societies who seek to redress legacies of colonialism. During the transitional period in South Africa, Ngugi became the most sought-after speaker on the preservation and development of African languages, shaping the discourse about language, culture and identity. Ngugi’s language ethos played a critical role in the recognition of indigenous languages in the constitution of South Africa. This chapter traces the impact of Ngugi’s language activism, particularly as it has shaped the author’s own development as a writer in both English and IsiXhosa. Through an autoethnographic lens, this chapter foregrounds personal reflection on Ngugi’s influence. It challenges the reductive tendency to confine Ngugi’s legacy solely to his direct intellectual and literary output, arguing for a more expansive appraisal of his enduring influence in shaping and sustaining language discourse among the formerly colonised. It recognises the evolution of Ngugi’s ideas over time and attributes this to his responsiveness to the shifting dynamics of contemporary society and global discursive formations.

The routines of hospital life for cancer in-patients, and the self-developed routines within these routines, are discussed here.

I was initially diagnosed at my local hospital, but was able to change to the University of Tokyo Hospital. I was then told of the punishing treatment I would receive. We also found out my cancer was HPV-related, as many neck cancers.

The first intensive bout of chemotherapy went very well, and I was reluctant to undergo another intensive week. At the beginning of the second round I had an almost life-ending anaphylactic shock, being saved by a close friend.

We returned to Japan in the summer of 2013, me now back at pre-cancer weight, and the girls with Birmingham accents. This chapter brings the narrative to a close.

By the end of January my treatment was over, and successful. I went back to work, too soon really, and this chapter recounts some of the struggles with my body and colleagues.

American English is not a simple thing to define. The United States is a big place, with many different regions. American English is certainly different from British English, and yet it is hard to set boundaries on the differences. American culture also plays a role in American English, and some say that politics does as well. In the end, the multitude of voices of Americans of whatever belief and whatever region come together to emerge as what people around the world recognize as American English.

This chapter summarises the key findings of the book on offensive language online, with particular emphasis on the perspectives of those targeted. It outlines the book’s multi-layered approach, which integrates corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. The chapter also explores future directions for research, including platform-specific variations, sociolinguistic changes and the value of interdisciplinary methodologies for understanding and addressing offensive language in digital spaces.

When Elizabeth Maconchy entered the British compositional scene in 1930 with the premiere of her orchestral suite, The Land, she and her fellow composers had an unsettled relationship with the prevailing musical styles of Europe. Whereas continental composers were highly regarded by British critics as cutting edge, their British contemporaries were faulted as derivative, unoriginal, and too steeped in national traditions to contribute to the ‘new’ music. Constant Lambert argued his rival countrymen (and women) had let their moment to be ‘modern’ pass them by. This chapter examines the scope of modernism on the continent and scholars’ difficulties in pinning down a precise functional definition of the so-called ‘modernist’ style. Practitioners of European modernism sought to be sensational or at the very least individual. British modernism, on the other hand, tended toward the juxtaposition of ‘old’ and ‘new’, an eclecticism that is not bound to any specific ideology.

New Zealand English (NZE) is one of the most well-researched varieties of English in the world. This is largely due to the existence of several high-quality spoken corpora, including the Origins of New Zealand English (ONZE) corpus. This corpus has provided the foundation for work on new dialect formation, sociolinguistic variation and sound change. However, published descriptions of the emergence of NZ English are based on data from only a sub-set of speakers from the ONZE corpus. More recent work has begun to utilise data from the full ONZE corpus, and other spoken and written corpora of NZ English. This chapter will first provide an overview of the existing received wisdom on the development of New Zealand English, before focussing on several recent studies showing how much further we have now come in our understanding of the history and development of this variety.

Modern proponents of free speech maintain that the value of expression resides in its authenticity-making power, which generates political legitimacy. They simultaneously concede that the value of expression is not without abridgments, no matter how deeply felt or authentically fulfilling such expression may be. Given these commitments, how can free speech be valued for its authenticity-making power, and yet also conditionally regulated? This chapter explores a resolution based on an interpretation of Aquinas’s thought on speech and expression. First, Aquinas clarifies Aristotle’s distinction between vox (animal expression) and loquutio (logical discourse) as an irreducible relationship of explanandum and explanans: loquutio is uniquely disposed to comprehending what is just or unjust within what is pleasant or painful. Second, Thomistic loquutio is directed to truth while permitting false claims as logical-temporal constituents of discourse, requiring above all a “discursive situation” that avoids both contradiction and epistemically unjustified conviction. These characteristics of Thomistic loquutio are supported by his treatment of angelic communication, which is not revelatory so much as consultatory from a second-person perspective and clarificatory from a first-person perspective. Ultimately, this interpretive Thomistic account rejects the modern commitment of authenticity without absolutism, while affirming certain aspects of what makes speech politically valuable.

Chapter 4 analyses processes of making climate mitigation into a policy area during the 1970s to mid 1990s. It explores the ideas, frames, and interests that informed United Nations climate change debates, how mitigation came to be defined as a policy area, and, ultimately, the specific compromises that were necessary to agree emissions reduction targets for Annex 1 countries. The role of political compromise in processes of reaching agreements and on governing bodies is foregrounded. Particular attention is also paid to questions of how pro-mitigation groups articulated the need for change, the role of climate science within this, how anti-mitigation coalitions narrated their contestations, and how these debates informed compromises reached. Although negotiated outcomes were unsatisfactory in many ways, there is a sense that all parties did, to greater or lesser extents, compromise to engender these first stages in the politicisation of climate mitigation.