A theory of some finding or observation is an explanation of that finding or observation. Further, a good theory is a set of principles that are sufficient to show that the phenomenon is an instance of more general phenomena or principles. But not all explanations help us understand general phenomena because they lack some fundamental characteristics. The necessary characteristics of adequate explanations include explicit definitions and precise and limited scope, that is, they do not attempt to explain everything about a given event or action. Further, they can be tested with empirical data; they do not appeal to supernatural forces or to explanations with claims that testing is not necessary.

Chapter 5 begins a closer examination of the text included with the ‘lost’ and ‘runaway’ notices. Description, and more particularly object description, was an emerging textual praxis in the eighteenth century. It relied on writers understanding the relevant features of particular ‘things’ to make them visible within a particular culture. In analysing the ‘lost’ and ‘runaway’ notices, it becomes clear that readers and writers were aware of the salient features needed to describe different things, such as watches and dogs. What becomes apparent within this chapter is that different languages of possession existed for different possessions. The second half of the chapter then explores the forms of knowledge and memory required to write descriptions of absent ‘things’. It finds different methods of recording at play, such as noting down salient details in diaries and memorandum books. It also finds that individuals often did not rely on their own memory but rather called upon the records and knowledge of others, such as watchmakers. Here we see evidence of material literacy and knowledge, but also of how it was shared and enacted by a wider community.

How we create believable characters. Resisting the urge to decide exactly who your character is before you know who your story needs them to be. The interdependence of character and plot and the emotional journey of the character. Moving beyond ‘show; don’t tell’: the interaction between characters allows the reader to get to know characters by observation rather than instruction. Managing minor characters. Conflict, consistency and contradiction all have a part to play in plausible characterisation. Characters come from you but they’re not you: the importance of freeing ourselves as writers from ourselves as people.

How we transform our memories and experiences into fiction beyond the injunction to ‘write what you know’. The imaginative process includes filling in the gaps of memory, embracing the freedom to invent, selecting a viewpoint and adding energy through dialogue. We need to consider not only which details and descriptions to include but which to omit: the balancing of information affects the meaning and impact of the story.

How to communicate the world of your story. The traditional character portrait and scene-setting description contrasted with the dominant contemporary development of character and context as the plot evolves. The function of description. Avoiding inappropriate lyricism. Immersion in time and place; repurposing our own experience and editing for focus. The subjective nature of description. Conveying, rather than merely describing, emotion, atmosphere, environment. The familiar and the unfamiliar. The effect of description on pace; discerning the extent and necessity for description. Embedding description in action. Using telling details.

Chapter 4 addresses four types of issues. First, I delve into the ambiguous status of the idea of legitimacy in the discourse on politics. Legitimacy is both omnipresent and an object of suspicion. On the one hand, it is one of the terms most frequently used in conversations on politics. On the other hand, especially in the academic disciplines that deal with the study of politics, the notion of political legitimacy has its detractors. There is intellectual nervousness about embracing it and relying on it. Second, comparing natural sciences and social sciences, I explore some of the features of what a theory is (description, explanation and predictability) and what this means for the theory of social phenomena that factors in political legitimacy. Third, I examine two different approaches of politics: politics mainly as power, and politics mainly as community. Fourth, I highlight the centrality of legitimacy for a theory of politics as community.

This chapter claims that two events marking the beginning and end of the decade—the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—signal a continued interest in natural historic practices of classification, observation, and visualisation. Rajan argues more specifically that texts like On the Origin of Species and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette combine eighteenth-century practices of observation and description with contemporary modes of visualisation that were popularized through optical technologies like the stereoscope. While it has become customary to view Victorian visual technologies as breaking from the epistemological assumptions of early modern philosophy and science, Rajan demonstrates that accurate and vivid description in natural history and realist fiction in fact demanded a synthesis of competing epistemologies. The work of Darwin and Brontë thus allows us to trace a methodological overlap between nineteenth-century literature and science and reassess received intellectual histories of visual culture.

This chapter reviews the perspectives and levels of an analysis that inform how an observation is made. This is done by demonstrating that there are two perspectives (language use and the human factor) and five levels (summation, description, interpretation, evaluation, and transformation) of analysis in discourse analysis. These perspectives and levels can be used to understand the frameworks of established methodologies, such as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. After reading this chapter, readers will know that the analytic process can combine different perspectives and levels of analysis.

Once the data are collected and cleaned, we can start to explore features of the network. Taking an initial look at descriptive network statistics is a good way to take an overview of the data and to spot red flags that signal a problem with the data entry or cleaning. The earlier these can be identified, the better. This chapter serves as a tutorial for using R to do so using the igraph package. It introduces the process of importing a data file into R and walks through the first things you might do with the data, including computing descriptive statistics of the structural features, integrating substantive features of nodes and links, and visualizing the network.

Lucian is a master of ekphrasis – the art of rhetorical description and notably the vivid verbal evocation of works of art. One particular aspect of Lucian’s art historical enterprise is a comparative aesthetic. This extends beyond the comparison of artworks with other things or people (in texts whose titles signal such comparison) to some of the forms in which Lucian chose to write, notably dialogic media (whether dramatic of reported). This comparative game knowingly plays with the inevitable competition of art and text that inheres in the verbal description of the visual. Beyond this, Lucian takes synkrisis or comparison – a central trope in the rhetorical handbooks – and exploits it so as to give voice to the marginal, to elevate the alien and to emphasise questions of multiplicity and diversity within empire. This ideological exploitation of description is what in part has made Lucian so attractive and controversial since the era of Renaissance Humanism. The apparently unproblematic arena of visual aesthetics is brilliantly seized – not only by Lucian but also many of his modern readers – as a site within which to reveal the place, voice, and importance of cultural, ethnic and subaltern identities not always in simple harmony with the hegemonic status quo of the Roman empire.

In this chapter, we explore how Mandarin Chinese is used to describe and taxonomise phenomena in history discourse. While Systemic Functional Linguistics has had a long tradition of studying history discourse, particularly in English and Spanish, the focus has been on historical events and their impact. We show in our study that building knowledge of history also involves reporting what things were like in the past. We analyse a pedagogic text describing the development of handicrafts during the period of the Western Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 24), a particularly prosperous period in Chinese history. We approach the identification of language resources from a ‘tri-stratal’ and ‘top-down’ perspective, taking into account threefold aspects of meaning-making, including the static knowledge structure in the subject area, the language resources organised in the unfolding of the discourse, and the grammatical resources organised in the clause. We reveal that each meaning-making level has its unique characteristics in construing description and taxonomisation.