This chapter defines the term “natural language” (natlang) and introduces the field of linguistics. A major theme of the chapter is that languages change over time. The chapter demonstrates how you can systematically study those changes to understand how and why the language shifts typically occur. Language change is further connected to the development of language families and the importance of contact among speakers of different languages. At the end of the chapter, you will be asked to apply these concepts to a brief study of natural languages.

This chapter presents a coherent picture of culture as emerging from a distinctive human mind architecture. I consider the mental processes that characterize the components of mind, and the inherently constituting and structured knowledge that represents its content. Grounded in a necessary and eclectic theory of cognition, I propose that culture consists of mental models shared within a community, or cultural models. Both the undeniably universal nature of numerous mental activities and the significantly idiosyncratic contents of an individual cultural mind find a plausible account within this theoretical approach. I explore three fundamental issues related to the investigation of culture as a mental phenomenon. The first regards a brief survey of theories about human cognition – both architecture and processes – that are of value and consequence to the anthropological enterprise. The second concerns the theorizing about the mental organization of knowledge. The thirdcovers the nature and value of cultural model theory in the contemporary anthropological landscape. I close by suggesting the concept of cultural model as a salient and necessary unit of analysis for anthropology.

Chapter 1 defines the theoretical homes of this book and shows why and how harm in language has resulted in legislative actions. The chapter creates dialogue between two broad fields: the study of meaning in language and critical studies of South Asia. The chapter provides a brief history of Hindu right in India and an overview of how the government has weaponized language against Indian Muslims in the last three decades. This chapter shows that a critical aspect of understanding the success of the Hindu right in India, a secular democracy whose inception is underlined by massive violence between different religious groups during the partition, is to understand how it slowly and with cunning use of language sowed seeds of sectarian distrust. The chapter argues that while Hindu right has been studied from multiple perspectives, a linguistic perspective is missing. Such a perspective shows how successful the Hindu right has been in taking actions that lead to long-term harm to Muslim communities in India.

This introductory chapter provides a brief survey of working definitions of oracy, including a history of the concept in British educational thought, and offers ways of contextualising the idea within broader debates over speaking and listening in popular culture.

In this chapter, Deborah Cameron, University of Oxford’s Professor of English Language tackles head on what she calls ‘The Trouble with Oracy’. She identifies several key contradictions and tensions within the oracy movement, including the lack of consensus on goals and definitions, the issue of social class, and the enduring clash between traditional and progressive education philosophies. Despite a contemporary shift towards business-centric goals, she notes, defining essential spoken language skills remains problematic, reflecting broader societal divisions. Though supportive of the aspirations of the oracy movement, she concludes on a sceptical note. To Cameron the complexities in defining "good" communication and the enduring influence of class divisions on educational discourses, will continue to hinder equitable oracy education.

This chapter examines the acquisition of Welsh in its social and cultural context, with a particular focus on how Welsh being a minority language influences how children speak it. The primary perspective taken will be sociolinguistic, that is variation in children’s Welsh. We review the literature on the linguistic effects of language contact between English as the dominant language on Welsh in the speech of children as well as adults, including discussions of code-switching and diachronic grammatical change. Next, we turn to examining the social factors that have been found to affect children’s acquisition of Welsh, especially language exposure and how this can vary considerably from child to child. The next section reviews one of the main methodological approaches that has been used to collect data in Welsh linguistics, namely corpus data, and considers some of the benefits and challenges that such a method provides for researching child language as well as directing readers to relevant corpora and making some recommendations on considerations for future corpora of children’s Welsh. The chapter concludes with ideas for research directions in this field that the reader may find useful.

Legal language is often ambiguous. Consider: “Only cars and trucks with permits are allowed.” Does [PP with permits] have “wide scope” over the entire series [NP cars and trucks] or “narrow scope” over only the closest noun, [trucks]? Judges often choose narrow scope, citing a legal canon, the “Last Antecedent Rule.” But they sometimes choose wide scope, referencing the “Series Qualifier Canon,” which assigns modifiers to a series. Though judges claim to want to use “most people’s” interpretations, these conflicting choices led us to ask “What WOULD most people say?” We ran three experiments to find out.

Overall, wide scope was preferred. With biased PPs, the preference dropped slightly when the bias matched the last noun, “[NP cars and trucks] [PP with trailers],” but not the first, “[NP trucks and cars] [PP with trailers],” where a universal syntactic “No Crossing Branches principle” limits the PP’s domain. With temporal PPs, “People may park [NP cars and trucks] [PP on weekends],” the preference was also uniformly wide scope, not surprisingly, since these PPs can only modify verbs, not nouns. Taken together, our experiments show how experimental psycholinguistics can offer powerful evidence about how “most people” understand legal language, important information for judges and lawmakers alike.

This chapter introduces the idea of language as a means to communicate ideas to other people. The speech chain – following the path of language from the mind of the speaker through to an acoustic signal, eventually interpreted by the mind of the listener – is introduced as an organizational framework. Of special note, all of the stages between talker and listener can influence the effectiveness of communication. The chapter provides a summary of central challenges associated with spoken language, including categorical perception, time-constrained understanding, flexibility, and multimodal integration. It then introduces several “big picture” themes from the book: stability versus flexibility, the importance of context, bottom-up versus top-down processing, hierarchical organization, the role of task demands, and neuroanatomical considerations related to localization and lateralization.

The chapter provides an introduction to the relationship between politics and semiotics, to Cognitive CDA as a framework for studying politics and semiotics, and to shifts in political performance and media landscapes which demand a multimodal approach to political discourse analysis. It starts by highlighting the symbolic nature of politics and the discursive means by which politics is primarily performed. The historical development of Cognitive CDA is described. The practical aims, theoretical commitments and methodological practices of Cognitive CDA are also discussed. The central position of the media in communicating politics is considered alongside the relationship between political and media institutions. Changes brought about by the advent of the internet and digital social media are discussed with a focus on the new genres of political discourse that have emerged as a result and on the more participatory forms of politics that are potentially afforded. The chapter discusses the rise of right-wing populism that has coincided with changes to the media landscape and the shifts in communicative style by which it is marked.