In its broadest sense, book history is concerned with all the media – electronic, printed, handwritten, oral – in which dictionaries have been preserved and circulated. Lexicography began at a particular point in the development of the book, and many topics in the global history of lexicography are book-historical topics. One of the most fundamental of these is the distinction, seen in western and non-western traditions alike, between dictionaries which are made to support ready reference, and dictionaries which are made to support slower, more thorough, study. Another is the distinction between the dictionary text as a single entity, and the body of lexicographical material as a repertoire from which different selections can be made on different occasions. Another is the dependence of the textual structure of the dictionary as we know it on the physical structure of the codex (as opposed to scrolls, clay or wooden tablets, and other media). These topics are of evident continuing relevance to the compilers, publishers, and users of dictionaries in electronic form.

The world population growth curve shows a kink from 100 BCE to 200 CE. It occurs in all major populated regions: China, Mesopotamia, Mediterranean, and (least of all) in India. Graphing of population doubling times over time shows utter discontinuity. It looks as if Earth’s carrying capacity for humans reached a limit that no increase in technology could overcome, but by 400 CE a unique breakthrough occurred. An exponent value in “T-function” fits to population data before and after the kink shifts in a way that suggests a crucial change in innovation practices. From isolated innovators, humankind shifted to moderate interaction over space and time, due to literacy. A sudden increase around 400 CE in ability to make use of written records is implausible, yet it remains the only conceivable way to explain the kink in world population growth curve.

Chapter 7 distills from the empirical studies their implications for emoji theories overall and for their applicability to the educational and healthcare realms. The studies have borne a number of concrete implications for emoji theory in general, including how they fit in with communication theories, including nonverbal aspects. Several theoretical notions are developed as well, generalizing them from previous chapters, including the apparent function of emoji as “annotators” of meaning, not just conveyors of prosodic or gestural features in writing. Another notion is that of episodic meaning, whereby the placement of an emoji in the episodes that constitute a message adds to it semiotically. Emoji grammar is thus more appropriately characterized as an episodic grammar.

Using both the Petcoff and Palaganas studies as a point of departure, this chapter looks at the more general educational implications of bringing emoji into pedagogical practices. The underlying premise is that emoji not only are highly understandable images, aiding learning but also can create a positive environment, making teaching and interaction congenial and open to all learners, no matter their backgrounds or learning capacities, since emoji give them an equal voice. Emoji allow for a destigmatized approach, especially for disadvantaged learners who might not be able to adequately speak for themselves. Emoji are a psychological conduit that can easily open up lines of interaction to virtually everyone. Once this is achieved, any subject matter, from English to mathematics, can be imparted broadly through any type of learning style.

Chapter 2 summarizes the findings of a research project conducted by Petcoff in which she explores using emoji as a viable literacy and postsecondary writing teaching tool. Her work chronicles the teaching situation in a Texas community college, whereby an integrated reading and writing project was devised in which students attempted to demonstrate mastery of State-mandated literacy content areas using both traditional writing and the emoji code. The project provides data-driven findings that allow for the exploration of semioliteracy as a teaching approach, as well how the shared meanings of emoji by students constitute an unconscious semiotic domain. The Petcoff study offers opportunities for further research with similar groups of learning, via iconographic tracking and rendered ecologies with a particular focus on advancing literacy within the framework of first-year and postsecondary writing instructional efforts. Parallels between semioliterate qualities used in reading and writing instruction and healthcare, as well as healthcare professional education, are discussed at the conclusion of the chapter.

The historical relationship between semiotics and healthcare is explored in Chapter 3. The authors look specifically at the link between education and healthcare communications that is established by the use of emoji in such communications. The semioliterate nature of healthcare and its implications for respective education are explored, particularly as these relate to early diagnoses based on physical signs and symptoms. Parallels are then drawn between the semioliterate qualities of emoji in the Petcoff study (Chapter 2) and the potentiality of emoji as an effective doctor-to-patient healthcare communicative tool. The chapter concludes by considering how the emoji code can be inserted into traditional healthcare professional education settings, so as to show students how effective it can be in practitioner–patient interactions.

Chapter 1 offers an in-depth, historically based discussion of the research on emoji and on matters of general concern regarding this unique type of visual character, along with a rationale for the need for a comprehensive treatment of emoji in education. The authors describe the reasons for focusing on higher education, particularly health professional education. They begin by examining the background work on emoji theory and research and offer initial insights into the discourse and semiotic functions of the emoji code. Such functions form the basis for considering the emoji code as a teaching tool that may be used to craft hybrid literacy-focused instruction (textual and visual). The discursive and recursive properties of emoji form the basis of semioliteracy, a theory that one of the authors (Petcoff) contends offers a basis for emoji use in developmental reading and writing and across several higher education academic fields. Specifically, the chapter addresses the potential use of emoji as a literacy instruction tool in both higher education and healthcare professional education.

The union’s educational campaign was meant to reshape domestics to fit them into the proletarian mold. The union encouraged domestic workers to develop themselves through reading and writing, as well as participation in socialist leisure activities and revolutionary memory initiatives. This chapter demonstrates that ideas about class and gender fundamentally shaped the project of turning domestic servants of the old days into the “New Soviet Domestic Workers,” empowering them, but simultaneously limiting their agency. Domestic servants were subjected to the top-down cultural enlightenment program of the labor union because they were viewed not only as the least developed among the proletarians, due to their peasant background and their gender, but also as being in the closest proximity to their petty bourgeois employers. The labor union’s disciplinary approach, however, provided space for domestic workers to engage creatively with the official discourse and use it to claim a place in revolutionary society.

Reflecting the turn in colonial literary scholarship towards performance in relation to sound studies, this chapter examines poetry as a form of poesis that emerged as an aural aesthetic category in colonial Mexico. Taking into consideration sociocultural factors, including language, class, and caste, and the evangelizing impetus of much religious music, this exploration of sounded lyric verse explains how these forms were not limited to church settings and places, nor to colonizing sources. The chapter considers poetry as a prestige form in music, the presentation of lyric in public musical settings, and the importance of aural aesthetics to convey poesis as a performative aesthetic category of cultural belonging. Musical poetic texts examined include the romance, villancico, church music, and other popular forms of autochthonous lyrical verse. Finally, the chapter considers the continuation of poetic aural performance through the nineteenth century.

This chapter presents the evolution of the main demographic variables: population growth and its sources, occupational structure, territorial distribution, and educational levels. Each of these four variables are taken separately to provide a long-run, quantitative description and an analysis based on bibliography. The overall image resulting from overlaps and interactions between the variables suggests three distinct “structural periods”. The first period, which covers most of the nineteenth century, featured remarkably stable structures. In contrast, the second period, from around 1890 to 1980, was an era of major transformations, such as the demographic transition, de-agrarianization, urbanization and mass literacy. After 1980 a third period is found in which demographic change has shifted to a different path involving low population growth, tertiarization, new trends in population geography, and longer schooling periods. The new challenges associated with this last period call for active public policies.

This study addresses the following questions: (1) What kind of unique phonological characteristics do heritage Japanese learners share? (2) Does L1 or L2 Japanese share these characteristics? (3) Do these characteristics correspond in oral and written production? (4) What could affect phonological transfer? Longitudinal/cross-sectional data to identify phonological transfer from English to heritage Japanese were collected from diary entries/compositions as well as oral and written tests by heritage Japanese learners growing up in Australia, compositions and written tests by Japanese monolinguals in Japan, and essay translations by L1 English speakers learning Japanese as an L2 in Australia. Possible phonological transfer features in heritage Japanese were examined to see if they occur in the L1 and L2. Correspondences between oral and written transfer features were also investigated, and quantitative analyses examined factors associated with phonological transfer. Findings indicate that phonological transfer is acquisitional, possibly influenced by literacy, the mental lexicon, and both sociocultural and individual factors.

Chapter 13 addresses the sub-skills needed for successful second language literacy development. The relationship between literacy development and other second language skills, like vocabulary acquisition, are also presented. Learners’ prior experience with first language literacy skills is another factor for teachers to consider as they structure literacy-oriented goals and activities for their courses.

This chapter opens the volume’s investigation of several major questions – What is technology? What is literary technology? Is literature a technology? – by responding to Walter Ong’s opposition of the naturalness of oral speech and the artificiality of “technologized” writing. It presents a historical overview of the consequences of the development of writing in the West. Considering indigenous texts by such Haida authors as Skaay and Ghandl, MacRae pushes against standard scholarly accounts of the teleological triumph of print that have served to provide “an intellectual bulwark for imperialism and colonialism.” MacRae positions orality and oral performance as rich and generative technologies whose complex affordances are impossible to render in other media: Writing and printing, he argues, “impact literature and culture” primarily “by leaving things out: gestures, colors, coughs, shouts, and murmurs, the sound of falling rain: the entire three-dimensional world of human experience.”

The spread of literacy throughout the world made it necessary to develop a systematic (stage-based) and effective (quick and inexpensive) way of teaching reading that could be delivered to many (different) people simultaneously with the use of the ever-changing textures of reading. In this chapter, it will be shown that all of these considerations, when contemplated holistically, define the parameters of the genetic system that is the foundation of literacy in general and (a)typical reading and writing in particular. Yet it is a distal one, with the proximal foundation being the brain. It will be concluded that the genetic bases of (a)typical reading and writing is nothing more than the genetic bases of a brain that, pressured by the demands and opportunities imposed by modern society, has turned itself into a reading and writing (i.e., literate) brain.

This chapter aims to unravel the contribution of the neuroscience of reading to the study of literacy development across languages and writing systems. The development of early literacy can be adversely impacted by neurodevelopmental disorders and socioeconomic disparities that have lasting effects on child and adolescent cognition. The goal of this chapter is to address the continuum of literacy development in two critical stages, birth-to-six and six-to-ten years old, and their respective language and brain milestones: the hardwired brain networks for speech, and the adaptation of brain regions for reading. The discussion attempts to disambiguate neurodevelopmental disorders and socioeconomic factors that influence early literacy, and the associated effects on brain function and structure. It is concluded that there is emerging evidence for a near-universal brain system that develops with learning to read across writing systems and the chapter addresses the dynamic relations among brain networks for reading, speech and writing across the two age spans. It is also claimed that the neuroscience of reading has the potential to inform prediction of reading achievement, identification of risk for reading difficulties, and possibly, choice of intervention and of the age ranges that are more amenable to treatment.