Chapter 5 distinguishes three subtypes of inferential processes that go beyond the literal meanings of words and constructions, each of which has resulted in disputed meanings in lawsuits. The first involves inferences arising from information given in the immediate context. One dispute in a libel suit centered on whether there was a chain of reasoning in a tabloid magazine article that would lead readers unmistakably to the implicature that the plaintiff was being used for sex by a Hollywood celebrity. Another libel suit involved the alleged implication of racial profiling in a political campaign mailer. And the focus in another was on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and whether a speaker at a public forum did, or did not, “imply” that a particular named company was acting illegally and had violated it. The second type of inference arises from “the presumption of truth,” whereby sentences are normally understood to be making a claim the speaker believes to be true, unless this is explicitly qualified by a disclaimer. This was at the basis of a libel suit in which a tabloid magazine was accused of presenting a new theory of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in a way that was claimed to “imply” that the magazine endorsed it, so incriminating one of the individuals involved. The third type of inference arises from real-world knowledge and is commonly evoked for suggestive terms in trademark law. ROACH MOTEL is given as an illustration, and a detailed analysis is then provided for PERSONAL POST OFFICE, arguing that it is also suggestive.

In 1984, Winston Smith said that freedom is the right to step back from lies and say that 2 and 2 make 4. But today, even though we are free in Smith’s sense, someone else will say, loudly and repeatedly, that 2 and 2 make 5. And who will separate for us the wheat from the chaff? Therefore free speech is no longer always helpful, as thinkers like Mill and Holmes thought, in which case we must consider how to repair the marketplace for ideas so that we can advance in solid knowledge rather than drown in mere opinions. John Thompson suggested a “Trump Test,” whereby “public language… must distinguish between… grown up political discourse and outright nonsense.” This can be done in two ways. We can wait until our speakers and influencers fix their discourse, which may take many years, or we can fix the information system that conveys to us too many incorrect propositions. If we chose the second option, what needs to be done is clear. We must regulate the use of smart phones so as not to permit them to maintain a conversation that fractures modern society and muddles modern thinking. Of course, to overcome such a pleasant national addiction will require commitment to moderate political activism, and each of us must look for inspiration to that end. Thomas Paine told us that we have the power to remake the world. He did, and so can we.

The concluding Chapter 8 gives a summary of the language disputes covered in the previous seven chapters. It then tries to answer the general question about why these disputes have arisen in American courts among people who do not normally miscommunicate and disagree like this. Four reasons are given. First, in cases of ambiguity and multiple interpretations one side in the dispute paid insufficient attention to, or chose to ignore, the disambiguating role of context. Second, at the heart of the dispute there was often a subtle and complex aspect of linguistic meaning and comprehension that the theories and empirical methods of the language sciences are designed to explain. Their findings can provide relevant linguistic information to the triers of fact for legal decision-making, and these subtleties and complexities would often not have been appreciated without linguistic expertise. Third, there were regularly legal and financial advantages and benefits that were motivating each of the parties in the dispute. And fourth, some of the opinions delivered by language consultants were unhelpful because these “experts” had little expertise in relevant areas of the language sciences.

This chapter introduces the book’s central argument about the parallel development of ideas about context in anthropology and Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It situates both within broader ‘cultures of context’ in twentieth-century thought, while establishing key themes about form and formlessness. The introduction argues that anthropology’s current antiformalist stance represents not progress but a particular historical development that deserves examination. It outlines how the book will trace shifts from logic to language to life as models of context in both Wittgenstein and anthropology.

This chapter examines how early British social anthropology developed formal approaches to context that paralleled Wittgenstein’s logical contextualism. It focuses on Radcliffe-Brown’s structural-functionalism and its similarities to Tractarian logic, while contrasting this with Malinowski’s more fluid approach. Through examination of the Cambridge School of anthropology and its influence, the chapter demonstrates how a particular culture of context emerged in early anthropology that privileged formal, logical structure.

This chapter analyses Wittgenstein’s transitional period and his shift from logical to linguistic models of context. Centred on his work in early 1930s and on his ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough’, it shows how Wittgenstein moved from seeing context as singular logic to viewing it as multiple ‘logical spaces’ or ‘grammars’. This shift prefigures later anthropological moves away from formal systems while retaining some commitment to structure through language as model.

This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its model of logical context. Against readings that see it as purely anti-contextualist, the chapter shows how logic functions as a form of context in early Wittgenstein. Through biographical and historical context, it demonstrates how the Tractatus emerged from and responded to specific intellectual environments, while setting up the book’s broader argument about parallel developments in anthropology and philosophy.

In this chapter, Jon Boden of the band Bellowhead confronts a pervasive element of folk performance that affects reception and yet often escapes notice: spoken introductions. He points out that as a conversational and informal art, folk music shares much with humour. Introductions, he argues, can serve several important purposes, including framing narratives, providing historical context, distancing, and offering a partisan viewpoint. Folk performers often have to balance an audience’s desire for a sense of personal accessibility and communality with the equally necessary demands of entertainment professionalism.

This chapter sorts out how we can distinguish small worlds and conditions of risk from large worlds and conditions of uncertainty along three dimensions (section 1). Unnoticed by students of world politics, in many domains of knowledge the twentieth century saw an important collective shift in terminological resources from Newtonian humanism to post-Newtonianism and para-humanism. These two worldviews are therefore discussed (in sections 2 and 3). Both engage uncertainty more openly than Newtonian humanism does. In any field of study, including world politics, “speaking differently” in a new conceptual language can make distinct contributions to understanding – contributions that can be as important as “arguing well” by relying on conventional terminology. In this case, speaking differently helps us rethink the risk-uncertainty conundrum.

How we engage our reader, and where we leave them. The several functions of the opening of a story: drawing the reader in; providing context; introducing character; establishing tone. Closed to open endings: the spectrum of possibilities. Consolidation and conclusions without closure.

What counts as scientific writing has undergone massive changes over the centuries. Medical writing is a good representative of the register of scientific English, as it combines both theoretical concerns and practical applications. Ideas of health and sickness have been communicated in English written texts for over a thousand years from the Middle Ages to the present, with different traditions and layers of writing reflecting literacy developments and changing thought-styles. This chapter approaches the topic from the perspective of registers and genres, considering how texts are shaped by their functions and communicative purposes and various audiences. Some genres run throughout the history of English: remedy books were already extant in the Old English period. Another core genre, the case study, mirrors wider scientific developments in response to changes in styles of thinking: medieval scholasticism is gradually replaced by a growing interest in increasingly systematic empirical observation. The establishment of learned societies from the seventeenth century onwards gives rise to new genres like the experimental report, and concomitant disciplinary advances and technological developments in the following centuries gradually pave the way for modern evidence-based medicine. Today medical advances are communicated in digital publications to a worldwide readership.

Kant’s distinction between different uses of judgments – determining and reflecting – sheds light on two areas of recent debates about thought experiments as a method: (1) the question of bizarre cases and (2) the problem of missing context. On the question of bizarre cases, I show how a Kantian explains why it is sometimes acceptable for thought experiments to be far-fetched. For philosophical problems that call for reflecting judgment (i.e., the creation or discovery of new concepts), bizarre cases can be particularly effective. The problem of bizarre cases is closely related to the problem of missing context, which is another common objection to their use. The problem is that readers are often left to fill in background context that might be relevant for how they evaluate the thought experiment scenario. I will argue that missing context is a problem only if readers evaluate scenarios based on their prior knowledge and familiar experience. If instead, as I claim, the fictional case makes a new presentation possible, the additional context may be irrelevant and might distract from the presentation the thought experiment is designed to recreate.

When thinking about emotional expressions, most would probably envision facial expressions (e.g., smiling, scowling) or vocalizations (e.g., crying, laughter). Here we focus on the emotional postures and movements of the body – an important, but fairly understudied, signal for emotion perception. During emotional episodes, humans often position and move their bodies in consistent ways that may (or may not) signal their underlying feelings and future actions. We briefly review the historical antecedents of this literature, as well as current knowledge on the neural processing, developmental trajectory, and cultural differences in the emotional perception of body language. We continue by examining the role of the body as a contextualizing agent for disambiguating facial expressions, as well as their inverse relationship – from faces to bodies. Future directions and speculations about how this emerging field may evolve are discussed.

Corporate law, like all law, has a context; indeed, it has many contexts. To understand corporate law today, we need to appreciate the forces—social, political, economic, global and local— which shape that law. Modern corporations and contemporary Australian corporate law should be understood as a product of, and a compromise between, various social, economic and legal ideas and philosophies. This is the focus of the first two chapters of this book.

In this chapter, we ask the reader to temporarily postpone the quest for a more detailed explanation of the legal concepts that are introduced. We will come back to examine these concepts in detail elsewhere in the book.