The Conclusions summarise the book’s themes, highlighting the importance of language in creating character. Male characters (Hector and Achilles) use language to express individuality and display their ability to ‘read’ interlocutors, explaining their actions to the community while withholding full disclosure to prevent counterproductive results. They also expose fissures and tensions in their community’s values. However, their attempts to master language clash with human and divine unpredictability and communication failures. Ancient commentators policed the text to deny women escape from linguistic and behavioural limits. Yet, Homer’s text subtly suggests alternative readings of women’s minds and actions. Helen offers strong meta-narrative comments, linking the poem’s existence to her violation of gender norms. The chapter argues that interpretive communities, ancient and modern, rely on strict gender definitions when reading character minds, even though Homer’s text occasionally questions these boundaries.

Chapter 3 explores the physical and social boundaries of non-Muslim neighborhoods, which separated them from Muslim communities. It discusses both visible and invisible markers, such as dress codes and regulations activated when residents left these areas. Additional symbols of distinction included language and ritual practices. Non-Muslim schools are examined as institutions that bridged these boundaries, serving as heterotopias that encouraged interaction while enforcing discipline. The chapter also reexamines the idea of the “scapegoat” to analyze episodes of violence, especially during Moharram and Safar, highlighting how minority areas became particularly vulnerable to attack during crises like famine or political unrest.

When we think about inclusion in early childhood education, our minds often turn immediately to children with disabilities. While supporting children with diverse abilities remains crucial, true inclusion extends far beyond this single lens. Inclusion is fundamentally about creating environments where every child, regardless of their cultural background, family circumstances, language or life experiences, can belong, participate and thrive.

Chapter 11 introduces students’ early engagement with Statistics in the Foundation to Year 2 level. It focuses on key concepts such as posing questions, collecting data, and interpreting simple visual representations. You will explore essential language, sample activities, and assessment strategies, along with common misunderstandings to look for when supporting young learners in developing foundational data skills.

Chapter 8 builds on early understandings and examines how students deepen their conceptual grasp of Number and Algebra in the middle and upper primary years (Years 3 to 6). It clarifies key language and concepts and highlights common misconceptions to support diagnostic teaching. You will explore engaging classroom activities and assessment opportunities to consolidate mathematical reasoning and promote accurate, flexible thinking.

This chapter provides an account of how literary criticism, especially the one associated with F. R. Leavis and the Cambridge school worked, or failed to work, in an African context and the role this critical tradition played in the mapping of African writing in the postcolonial period. Focusing on the critical work of Abiola Irele, perhaps the most dominant figure in African literary critical studies in the second half of the twentieth century, the chapter looks at how the use of African literature as a primary body of reference led to the questioning of the key concepts defining literary criticism including the notion of tradition, literary genealogies, and the relation between language and identity. The chapter explores how Irele, working within three distinct cultural formations, namely the English, the French, and the Yoruba, positioned literary criticism as both an affirmation of tradition and a critique of traditionalism. Tracing the evolution of Irele’s critical thinking as he moved from universities in West Africa to the United States, the chapter provides an account of the relation between criticism, institutions, and audiences.

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.

Referentiality is a core property of language that allows us to refer to entities or events. While evidence that captive apes communicate referentially by pointing is well-established, evidence in the wild remains scarce. The chapter suggests that the near absence of referential gesturing in wild apes may result in part from an anthropogenic bias and overabundance of caution in determining what constitutes reference for apes. A framework is presented to explore potentially referential gestures more generously – considering gestures whose form resembles the physical form, direction, or target of the recipient’s desired behavioural reaction. The chapter applies the framework to a gestural dataset from a chimpanzee community in which four possible cases of pointing were previously detected (<0.001 per cent) and found that ~18 per cent of gestures contained potential directional information. Taking a broader perspective when examining referential information in chimpanzee gestural communication may help us get to the point of ape reference.

Both linguistic and psychological constructionist approaches to emotion research recognize the crucial role of language in shaping emotion experience and communication. Multilingual individuals navigate multiple languages, and often multiple cultures, making it essential to understand how emotions are perceived, processed, experienced, and communicated in first and later learned languages. This chapter reviews previous findings from linguistics and psychology, shedding light on the complex and multifaceted relationships among emotion, language, and culture. While it is clear that multilinguals perceive, process, experience, and communicate emotions differently across their various languages, the chapter outlines possible directions for future research to further explore the impact of multilingualism and multiculturalism on emotions.

The chapter is centered around a cross-cultural approach of pointing development in the human species, in a socio-constructivist frame that insists on the cultural situatedness of meanings. Based on a few studies of infants’ pointing gestures, in relation with language development, the chapter goes back over potential issues and challenges in cross-cultural psychology and proposes some empirical and epistemological perspectives for future research. More specifically, the chapter highlights the multiple dimensions of the researchers’ responsibility when comparing early communicative development across cultures, referring for example to the notions of positionality and reflexivity. This contribution may guide the analysis of pointing throughout child development and help deconstruct the assumption of a universal expression of this gesture across cultures.

Beyond Words is a book of big questions about language. What is language? Where did it come from? How do we learn our mother tongue? How do we learn other languages in addition to our mother tongue? How do we use and understand language? How do we lose language? Collectively, these topics fall under the umbrella of psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is the marriage of linguistics and psychology. It is a branch of language science that explores the relationship between language and the human mind. This is a book that takes us down many rabbit holes. It is filled with astonishing research and surprising discoveries. It is about fierce debate and contentious topics that have fascinated us since ancient times and continue to do so today. Language is weird, but also wonderful. Language is intricate and innovative, confusing and complex, mysterious and most of all, it is multifaceted. Language is beyond words.

An introduction to the general properties of communication and the differences between language and communcation. Includes discussion of medium of communication, purpose, arbitrariness, discreteness, displacement, etc.

This chapter explores how important it is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in particular to have access to studying their own languages across all jurisdictions in Australian education. It also explores the increasing options available to teachers to provide these opportunities for students from Foundation to Year 12. The value is not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; all students in Australian schools can benefit from the deeper understanding of Indigenous peoples, cultures and histories that develops through the study of Indigenous languages. Language is the vehicle of cultural expression, and when a language is no longer spoken by its people all humanity is diminished by the loss of cultural transmission that occurs when a language ‘goes to sleep’. Teachers are very well positioned to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to help wake up the sleeping Australian languages and to maintain those that are still languages of everyday communication.