This introductory chapter, encyclopaedic in nature, covers the main aspects of catastrophe (CAT) risk from a qualitative perspective, offering an overview of what will be explored in quantitative terms in the subsequent chapters. It starts with the definition of the fundamental terms and concepts, such as peril, hazard, risk, uncertainty, probability, and CAT model. It then describes the historical development of catastrophe risk science, which was often influenced by the societal impact of some infamous catastrophes. The main periods are as follows: from ancient myths to medieval texts, mathematization (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and computerization (twentieth century). Finally, it provides an exhaustive list of perils categorized by their physical origin, including geophysical, hydrological, meteorological, climatological, biological, extraterrestrial, technological, and socio-economic perils. In total, 42 perils are covered, with historical examples and consequences for people and structures discussed for each one of them.

The 7th of January 1839, the day on which Daguerre’s invention was announced to the public, is just one mark on photography’s long evolutionary calendar. Daguerre and Henry Talbot had succeeded in producing images years earlier using entirely different processes, although, for most of the 1830s, few people had seen them. Plenty, however, had heard about them: words inevitably preceded images. This chapter focusses on letters and other writings in which the concept of photography was taking shape in the decade before photography officially began, and it considers the wider public discourse in which such writing participated. It proposes that photography’s private pre-history reflects epistemological developments and anticipates literary and cultural shifts. While it focusses on English-language letters and draws primarily from Talbot’s correspondence, it also makes use of translated commentaries from periodicals and papers, departing from the tidy conventional narrative of invention and history to consider instead a messier ongoing conversation about something humans very much wanted: something that, throughout the 1830s, didn’t yet answer to the name of photography.

September 1830 saw the first purpose-built passenger railway open between Manchester and Liverpool, followed by a proliferation of local, national, and international lines. Yet the integration of railway infrastructures, perspectives, and plotlines into writing was slow. This chapter examines terminology, speculative journalism, and early engagement with railways in fiction to demonstrate how writing across genres extended the emergent ‘railway imaginary’ well beyond the scope of its built referent. Yet gaps in spatial and temporal perception opened up by the railways posed a challenge to those plotting long-form fiction that relied on a sense of momentum towards a definitive ending. While selected works, including the Mechanics’ Magazine, Railroadiana, and The Pickwick Papers, stop short of representing railways as an inhabited system closely entangled with the familiar rhythms of 1830s life, they do take seriously the task of establishing a dynamic relationship between railway and narrative form that matched technological and literary ambition alike.

The chapters in the handbook cover five main topics. Gesture types in terms of forms and functions; the focus is on manual gestures and their use as emblems, recurrent gestures, pointing gestures, and iconic representational gestures, but attention is also given to facial gestures. Different methods by which gestures have been annotated and analyzed, and different theoretical and methodological approaches, including semiotic analysis. The relation of gesture to language use covers language evolution as well as first and second language acquisition. Gestures in relation to cognition, including an overview of McNeill’s growth point theory. Gestures in interaction, considering variation in gesture use and intersubjectivity. Across the chapters, the meaning of the term ‘gesture’ is itself debated, as is the relation of gesture to language (as multimodal communication or in terms of different semiotic systems). Gesture use is studied based on data from speakers of various languages and cultures, but there is a bias toward European cultures, which remains to be addressed. The handbook provides overviews of the work of some scholars which was previously not widely available in English.

This chapter introduces the following corpus of texts from ancient Egypt, and outlines the differing meanings ascribed to slavery and dependence from antiquity to modern times. The terms used for dependents and slaves in the various languages of the texts translated here – Egyptian (Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic), Greek, and Arabic – are briefly presented, and defining features of the condition of those so labelled are discussed. How and from where such persons were acquired, their life experiences, and the different forms of exploitation in which they were involved are introduced, as are forms of slave resistance and limits to the archaeological and textual evidence available, and so to what we can learn from it.

This chapter focuses on the terminology and typology relevant to the study of early writing systems from a linguistic perspective. It first introduces writing as a linguistic notation system that arose in the context of numerical and iconographic notation systems, and the study of writing systems as a growing subdiscipline of linguistics. Next, it presents the typology of written signs, including the basic divide between logograms and phonograms. It also describes how writing arose independently in three or four places in the world, resulting in writing systems that were heavily logographic, encoding morphemes, which have both phonological and semantic values. Abstraction along the phonological and semantic dimensions led to phonography and semantic determinatives. The author briefly characterizes each of the pristine systems and considers the typology of phonographic writing more closely, following the traditional division into syllabaries and alphabets. This chapter defends the established definition of syllabary and offers some criticism of the Daniels’ abjad-abugida-alphabet typology of segmental scripts. The chapter presents some early historical examples of phonographic scripts and considers implications of script typology on sign inventory size as well as the evolution of script types, and whether there is directionality in script evolution.

This chapter discusses the ongoing enterprise of developing typologies of writing systems, which strives to propose a coherent framework for classifying the world’s diverse writing systems. Because different theoretical assumptions about the core entities under analysis can yield divergent proposals, it is valuable to continually assess the conceptual and terminology contrasts that both shape and communicate typology proposals. Therefore, this chapter examines the underlying conceptualizations, the diverse, and often inconsistent, terminology, and the main limitations of existing typologies of writing systems, to further elucidate the materialization of written language both diachronically and synchronically. The substantial third section illustrates how the majority of typology proposals classify writing systems primarily in terms of a core set of representational principles, or mapping relationships, assumed to exist between the linguistic units and graphemes of a language. After commenting on the elusive trinity of key terms (writing system, script and orthography), this section outlines some of the most influential, controversial and promising typology proposals and reflects on the various conceptual and terminological distinctions propounded to capture the principles of representational mapping. The last section of the chapter briefly considers the merits of exploring complementary or alternative approaches to writing system typologies.

Informal borrowings are defined as expressions taken from a foreign language and used in informal American English. They conform to the traditional typology of borrowings and include such main types as loanwords and loan translations, but there are other finer distinctions, much as there are certain terms often confused with borrowings, such as code switches or nonce borrowings. Informal language, in turn, refers to a type of vocabulary which is stylistically “lower” than the standard language and “below” the formal and neutral registers on the formality scale. It includes two subsets: colloquialism, which is composed of moderately informal and casual expressions, and slang, which is composed of highly informal and unconventional expressions, strongly linked with a sociocultural context. Again, there are numerous similar terms to account for this type of lexicon, but their semantic scopes are different.

Non-legally binding instruments do not constitute treaties but they are widely used by states and international organisations as a form of political commitment. They have various titles, the most common of which is memorandum of understanding, although some states use this title also for treaties with a certain subject matter. In the multilateral context, non-binding instruments are often used for plans of action, guidelines and other forms of standard setting. To ensure that an instrument is non-legally binding, care must be taken in the drafting to evidence that intention, including use of the right terminology. An examination of state practice reveals broadly similar principles. Why do states and international organisations use non-legally binding instruments in preference to treaties? Reasons include confidentiality, lack of formality, and ease of amendment and termination. But there are risks, including possible lack of respect for commitments and lack of care in drafting. Non-legally binding instruments, both bilateral and multilateral instruments, may in some contexts be regarded as a form of soft law. They may also exceptionally give rise to estoppel. Non-legally binding instruments may also be evidence of a state’s decision or policy in the context of judicial review by domestic courts.

The word “bucchero,” most commonly used to describe the black ceramics produced in Etruria, began to be used for pottery made elsewhere in the Mediterranean that relied upon the same technology – an oxygen-reducing kiln environment to achieve a firing that is dark through the biscuit and requires no slip or glaze. This chapter questions whether the term “bucchero” was ever used for ceramics from Anatolia in order to support Herodotus’ claim that the Etruscans were immigrants from Lydia. An examination of literature from the early twentieth century through today reveals that bucchero is understood as a “national” pottery for the Etruscans but is not a defining ceramic for any other culture. Therefore, while “bucchero” is used in a variety of contexts, it is indelibly linked with Central Italy. Over time, publications gradually shifted toward using “bucchero” only for Etruscan ceramics and “grey ware” for East Greek material, at times explicitly rejecting the use of the word for anything other than Etruscan material. Instead of uniting ancient cultures or demonstrating influence through shared ceramic technology, this term became a way to separate them.

New technologies inevitably require new terminology. To refer to rudders, spectacles, telephones, and more, over the centuries Irish speakers borrowed words from other languages as well as repurposing native terms. In recent times, the challenge posed by loanwords has been political as much as linguistic, but, while we cannot know how people of the Middle Ages felt about the inflow of words from Norse or Norman French, technological vocabulary probably tells the history of contact between the Irish and other cultures more clearly than any other word-field. Within Irish itself, terms for inventions and innovations serve as fascinating case studies in language change and resilience: some medieval words for still-common devices have inexplicably fallen out of use; some early terms have been recorded again after long periods of silence; some words have manifested twice, hundreds of years apart. This chapter charts the emergence and development of a selection of technological terms in both medieval and modern Irish.

As scientists and above all practicing teachers are looking for teaching and learning approaches to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, the most important models are presented. One of the main differences between teaching and learning in the online classroom consist of asynchronous and synchronous forms of instruction. Their advantages and disadvantages are described and explained. This leads to the description of omnipresent procedures of video conferencing, an important teaching and learning tool during the pandemic.

Language in healthcare settings is important in order to better serve and understand the unique needs of various groups within transgender and gender diverse communities. Failure of healthcare professionals and institutions to adapt to evolving terminology contributes to the marginalization, invalidation, and exclusion of gender diversity in the medical field. Rather than dismissing or erasing unfamiliar identities, identifiers, or terminology, healthcare professionals should reflectively listen to how the patient affirms their autonomy and agency by using patient-provided terms. This chapter discusses the importance of using gender-affirming terminology in healthcare settings, reviews basic terms and definitions from a Western perspective, and provides recommendations for inclusive practices.

The chapter provides a general introduction to the book, presenting the background and the overall framework. It assesses the relationship between traditional linguistic phylogenetics and more recent computational approaches. After discussing the terminology relevant for linguistic phylogenetic studies it provides an overview of the various chapters of the book, highlighting some of the most important problems discussed by the authors. It then discusses some of the specific results of the individual chapters and the broader perspectives they offer on the phylogenetics of the Indo-European language family.

This introductory chapter reviews how researchers across a range of disciplines have critically reassessed their conceptions of language and of the relationship between language and identity, especially in multilingual or superdiverse contexts. Key elements of the ‘multilingual turn’ are elaborated, including the focus on the construction and negotiation of identity and the view of languages as part of a multimodal repertoire, thereby broadening and problematizing the definition of multilingualism. In a second section, the terminology used to describe multilingual speakers and practices is analysed, and its relation to the values and identities ascribed to them is assessed. The chapter then presents the three major themes around which the volume is structured: situated multilingualism and identity, multilingual identity practices and multilingual identity and investment. The final section explores the extent to which interdisciplinarity is represented both within the chapters and across the volume, and how far ‘integration’ and ‘common ground’, considered key aims for successful interdisciplinary work, have been possible.