The flourishing of the essay as a protean literary form in an age marked by growing interest in essaying systematic knowledge reflects a tension within eighteenth-century empiricism. Two divergent subgenres emerged from this tension. The conversational essay, first, drew upon a Montaignian tradition rooted in scepticism, dialogue, and performative rationality; these essays were associated with a form of pragmatic empiricism at ease with the idea of human knowledge as intersubjectively constituted in the public domain. On the other hand, the systematic essays of the Enlightenment, spurred on by John Locke’s attempt to establish ‘order’ in intellectual inquiry, deployed the essay as an instrument for establishing Universal Truth and what Leibniz termed ‘demonstrative knowledge’. In considering the epistemology of the eighteenth-century essay in Britain, this chapter explores not only how this bifurcated empiricism influenced the development of the essay, but also the ways in which the essay reconstituted empiricism itself.

This chapter discusses the poetics of familiarity embodied in the Romantic essay. It locates the origins of that poetics in Wordsworth’s ‘Preface’ of 1800 and 1802 to Lyrical Ballads. Responding in turn to the famous preface, the three most notable ‘familiar’ essayists of the era, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt, revise a manifesto for poetry into one for prose, a celebration of nature into a proclamation of the city. In their practice, the familiar essay becomes the exemplary form of urban expression in the Romantic era. The characteristic procedure of the essay is the slide from the familiar to the ideal and back again, by directly articulating the ideal bearing of the familiar subject, or by a range of other idealising (and essayistic) strategies.

Chapter 4 presents the results of a study by Palaganas, involving participants in an online continuing education course that used an emoji-capable, text-based platform, offered through the Center for Medical Simulation in Boston, Massachusetts. The chapter outlines the study, the compiled data, and the relevant findings. The study yields further insights into the potential for using the emoji code as an effective literacy and communication tool in a higher education context – namely, in a healthcare professional education program. Further, there is discussion of an interview with Dr. Shuhan He, a prominent proponent of emoji use in healthcare situations, wherein he goes over the impetus for his creation of the heart emoji.

This essay first argues that popular sovereignty or self-rule depends on self-understanding and then points to a set of practices and activities that make this kind of popular self-understanding more likely, even or especially in a populace as vast, complex, and divided as that of the United States of America in 2020. Brief analyses of works by Walter Lippmann, John Dewey, Walt Whitman, and Danielle Allen set the theoretical context for an overview of face-to-face conversation programs and an argument about the necessity of programs such as these to complement legal and institutional efforts to strengthen democracy.

This essay approaches David Tracy’s theme of conversation (‘which animates … the whole posture and method of Tracy’s career’) primarily as social and civil practice. Tracy’s Plurality and Ambiguity (1987) is brought into conversation with present-day cultural critic Sherry Turkle regarding how digitalised communications magnify the ‘interruptions’ of plurality and ambiguity that Tracy suggested mark all conversation. Some early critics suggested that Plurality and Ambiguity: (1) insufficiently considered the ambiguities of one’s interlocutors in conversation; and (2) ignored imperatives for some participants to resist powerful others’ framings of the rational task. Here, our digital situation can help highlight how deep down plurality and ambiguity stretch within any given conversation; as well as how socially fragile and crucial this phenomenon of conversation is. The world of deliberately designed digital platforms highlights how there is always some particular design to ‘the table’ at which conversation participants convene. Theology must learn the necessity of building a culture of genuine theological conversation by means of deliberate and detailed design decisions.

This chapter defends the unity of the Charmides as a dramatic whole. It does so by a close analysis of Socrates’ interactions with Charmides throughout the dialogue. The chapter argues that Socrates is presented as driven by an erotic quest for discovering beauty in Charmides’ soul. This explains the nature of Socrates’ initial interactions with Charmides; his abandonment of Charmides for the long discussion with Critias that follows; and his recalling of Charmides into the conversation at the end of the dialogue. It is argued that Socrates’ procedure for seducing Charmides into exposing his soul consists of the interplay of two arts, which I describe and analyse: the art of soul-medicine and the art of erotics, with the former art deployed by Socrates in service of the latter.

Chapter 19 opens by asking readers to reflect on prior collaborations, writing down their views on what makes people easy to work with and what makes them hard to work with. The chapter argues for a team-based approach to public engagement, and suggests ways to build effective teams. Also, it’s important to trust our partners at informal learning venues, as they have expertise on the audiences and logistics in these settings. Emphasizing that communication with these partners is still a conversation, the chapter returns to the principles of a successful conversation described in Chapter 3 and unpacks each one with reference to venue partners. A case study exemplifies these points, describing a partnership between university students and faculty and museum professionals. Details are given of negotiation about institutional missions and daily operations through to a demonstration on children’s science practices in a game about vowel sounds. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to make a detailed plan for getting their demonstration into a specific place or event.

Chapter 3 opens by asking readers to recall a problematic conversation like an argument. It reviews what the language sciences have learned about what people expect when going into conversations, what makes conversations go horribly wrong, and what makes them run beautifully. The chapter emphasizes four principles of a successful conversation: The Maxim of Quality is described as a rule to tell the truth. This rule relates to people’s conversational expectations, as well as to our credibility as experts. The Maxim of Quantity is described as a rule to say as much as you need to but not more. This rule relates to respect because adjusting how much we share to what our listeners already know requires finding out about them. The Maxim of Relevance is described as a rule to stick to the point. This also relates to respect because adjusting what we share to what our listeners want to know also requires finding out about them. The Maxim of Manner is described as a rule to be clear. This relates to both style and substance, again emphasizing adjustments for our audiences. This chapter’s Worked Example shows how an airport staff morale problem stemmed from violated maxims.

The ‘ethical turn’ in anthropology has charted alternatives to some prevailing philosophical, psychological, and anthropological approaches. This engagement forces anthropologists to reconsider old antinomies such as constraint and agency, relativism and universalism, individualism and collectivism. Like other anthropologists of ethics, we resist forms of determinism that would reduce ethical life to the putatively universal constraints of biology and psychology, the logic of rationality, or the workings of power and ideology. Instead, we consider the processes through which what seem to be constraints or universals serve as affordances that are ethicalized through historically contingent reflexive practices. Rather than being forced to choose between the individual and the collective in terms of who (or what) the ethical subject is, we demonstrate how social interaction is a critical site in which and through which such ethicalization occurs.

The introduction provides a brief overview of the topic, outlining the status of English as a global language and pointing at the lack of research when it comes to patterns of conversational interaction in Englishes of the Outer and Expanding Circle. Language and culture are closely interrelated, yet existing research on English interactions has so far focused on only one small part of the English language complex – that of Inner Circle varieties such as British or American English. The chapter ends with an overview of the research questions that will be addressed in this study as well as a detailed outline of the book.

Critics, commentators and historians have seized upon the ridiculous, comedic elements of Molière’s portrayals of salon culture and allowed the satire to upstage reality. Molière has been understood as belittling women’s attempts to influence expression in order to distance further salon culture from mainstream literary culture. However, considered in his seventeenth-century context, the playwright is not satirising women’s control of language or desire to critique literature in order to censure salon culture; rather Molière revels in exploring this complex cultural landscape that was as integral to the seventeenth century as the Sun King’s powerful rays. Molière’s contemporaries would not have interpreted the dramatist as censoring women’s agency. Posterity has tended to distance Molière from this worldly culture, recreating him as the all-knowing satirist who attempts to bring his contemporaries to their senses and excise worldly culture from the Grand Siècle. But Molière is not Alceste – he does not reject sociability, salon culture and galanterie. To conceive of salon culture and the values and practices associated with it – conversation, galanterie, sociabilité – as limited to a rarefied and marginalised space and practised only by an elite group is to misunderstand Molière’s context as well as the playwright’s intentions and his comedy.

This chapter explores how writing affected the nature of custom itself. The writing of custom did not fix or petrify custom and end its malleability or creativity, as scholars have assumed. Drawing on the work of literary scholars on the nature of medieval vernacular text and manuscript culture, I argue instead that each manuscript provided one authoritative version of custom and constituted one voice in a conversation over custom that continued with written text. This conversation can be seen where differences between manuscripts show diverging opinions about proper custom. This, in turn, meant that custom remained creative and dynamic even in written form. The purpose of the coutumiers was not to copy practised custom and faithfully record it with perfect accuracy in text. Rather, the coutumiers were meant to change the patterns of thought of ‘those who would hear or read the text’ and show them how to think in a legal manner, like a lawyer, judge, or sophisticated litigant. Teaching modes of thought rather than rules permitted those who did not spend years in university to understand the framework and rhetoric of lay courts, and enabled them to navigate these through changing rules, time, and circumstance.

Paradise Lost is constructed almost entirely of men talking to other men. Depending heavily on conversation and social discourse, Milton's epic takes the ideology of conversation in his culture seriously. Employing conversation to create social rank and hierarchy, while also using it to suggest homosocial pleasure and erotic attraction, Paradise Lost makes Adam, Raphael, the Son, Eve, and Satan into talkers who make power while they make desire. By linking conversation itself to the poem's hierarchies and hegemonic superstructures, this chapter argues that small talk and social discourse are key levers of authority-making in the poem and in early modern England.