This chapter argues for the Sophist’s background role in the genesis of the Stoic lekton. It shows the Stoics engaged critically with the ‘gigantomachy’, siding with the Giants by making bodies the sole beings, while introducing ‘something’ (τι) as a supreme genus. The chapter then explores how the Sophist’s question about sentence signification (261d–262e) likely prompted the Stoic reply that a sentence signifies an incorporeal axiōma, a proposition that subsists but may not hold.

Chapter 3 considers engagements with words in performance, focusing on John Cooke’s Greene’s Tu Quoque, or The City Gallant, and Thomas Middleton’s Women, Beware Women. Tracing the plurality of linguistic tastes associated with playgoers, it tracks key forms such as jests, conceits, and ‘fresh’ language and explores key debates between heightened and plain style, and about novelty and aptness. These tastes persisted despite shifts in linguistic fashion, resulting in plays that, despite paratextual complaints about the impossibility of pleasing all tastes, encompass a striking degree of linguistic variety into their practice. Greene’s Tu Quoque and Women, Beware Women reveal playwrights catering to a variety of linguistic tastes simultaneously, even whilst asking playgoers to reflect upon the judiciousness of their tastes, and even the trustworthiness of language itself.

This chapter investigates whether Proclus employs a distinction akin to the Fregean subsumption/subordination distinction to cast light on puzzling claims in the Sophist, such as ‘Motion is at rest’. It argues that Proclus distinguishes predicates true of a Form’s nature from those true by participation to avoid contradiction. The chapter concludes that Proclus’ account, while ingenious, suffers from logical and ontological flaws, cautioning against its adoption for interpreting Plato.

In Chapter 3, human consciousness is discussed, including the need for legal recognition of the capacity of humans to communicate, emote, and perceive. The impact of technology on consciousness and human bonding is noted, such as generative AI that may reduce human literacy and the capacity to communicate.

This chapter shows how Sallust developed the motif of language change during civil conflict in his Bellum Catilinae and his Histories. Sallust emerges as an author deeply concerned by conceptual loss, trying to preserve traditional means of moral evaluation as the Roman Republic collapsed. The chapter starts by exploring Sallust’s understanding of moral language; it then dissects the analysis of transvaluation in Cato’s speech, before showing how Sallust himself sets out to preserve moral language through his own work. The chapter finishes with a discussion of Lepidus’ and Macer’s speeches in Sallust’s Histories.

This chapter starts with a discussion of Thucydides’ famous description of wartime stasis in 3.82, including his account of transvaluations in 3.82.4. It then reassesses the historical context of Thucydides’ reflections on language and stasis; after that, it looks at several key passages where Thucydides shows the effect of the war on discourse, including the Melian Dialogue. Thucydides emerges as a writer who is overwhelmingly concerned with the way that war warps both evaluative language and practices of listening, but who sets out to rectify these effects through his own text. The chapter finishes with a revisionary treatment of Thomas Hobbes’ understanding of Thucydides.

This chapter shows how Tacitus uses paradiastole throughout his oeuvre to put two different kinds of political language into dialogue: the language of liberty and the language of empire. By using speakers with different standpoints, such as Calgacus, Cerialis, and Otho, Tacitus shows how history-writing can foster dialogue and serve as political theory. The chapter also analyses the collapse of speech-acts at the start of Tiberius’ principate, Maternus’ speech in Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus, and Tacitus’ narrative of civil war in Histories One.

The introduction sets out the key questions which the book addresses. First: what happens to language in times of civil conflict? Second: can the historian speak of timeless moral values? It then introduces the reader to the ancient texts the book addresses, and the figure of paradiastole, through which they address these questions. It goes on to contrast their reflections with Skinner’s and Nietzsche’s understanding of transvaluation. It finishes with some reflections on method.

This chapter investigates Aquinas’s account of how human beings can meaningfully speak about God despite the limits he takes human understanding to have. Focusing on Summa Theologiae, 1a, 3, the chapter explains how Aquinas argues that while our language originates in creaturely experience, it can nonetheless be applied to God in ways that are not merely metaphorical. The chapter also notes how Aquinas distinguishes between nominal and real definitions, between what a word signifies (res significata) and its mode of signification (modus significandi), and defends the view that terms such as ‘good’ or ‘wise’ can be predicated of God properly, though always imperfectly. Central to the chapter is Aquinas’s thinking on analogy, which mediates between univocal and purely equivocal predication, allowing words applied to creatures and God to enable us to speak truly about God without rejecting belief in divine simplicity. The chapter also explores later philosophical debates while highlighting how Aquinas’s nuanced account of analogy continues to illuminate the possibility of meaningful God-talk.

Although potential immigrants had an opportunity to migrate abroad, some gradually become disenchanted with the future life they envisioned they would have in countries of immigration. Synthesizing their narratives illuminates a common sequence of processes, with immigrants first becoming bored and disappointed with a host society unlike what they had envisioned, then frustrated with the language barrier and sentiments of cultural alienation due to their unfamiliarity with cultural references, customs, and norms. Then even after they culturally assimilate, aspiring immigrants encounter both racial discrimination that they perceive as hostile and local gender norms that make it difficult to find a stable relationship. After working for several years, they gradually become aware of how they are unable to advance their career within their job as an immigrant. The social forces and restrictive immigration policies discussed earlier can lead aspiring immigrants to cut their losses from their immigration project out of the belief they will have a happier life as an ex-immigrant in their homeland than “just an immigrant.”

The Conclusions summarise the book’s themes, highlighting the importance of language in creating character. Male characters (Hector and Achilles) use language to express individuality and display their ability to ‘read’ interlocutors, explaining their actions to the community while withholding full disclosure to prevent counterproductive results. They also expose fissures and tensions in their community’s values. However, their attempts to master language clash with human and divine unpredictability and communication failures. Ancient commentators policed the text to deny women escape from linguistic and behavioural limits. Yet, Homer’s text subtly suggests alternative readings of women’s minds and actions. Helen offers strong meta-narrative comments, linking the poem’s existence to her violation of gender norms. The chapter argues that interpretive communities, ancient and modern, rely on strict gender definitions when reading character minds, even though Homer’s text occasionally questions these boundaries.

Chapter 3 on Iran’s languages is the first of five chapters to focus on a specific social category. It addresses issues concerning the Persian language and its origins and developments over time. Persian is Iran’s only officially recognized language. This single-language policy disadvantages speakers of other languages there. Half of Iran’s population consists of native speakers of the Persian language, most of whom adhere to broadly defined notions of Persian culture. The other half of the population consists of Iranians who speak other native languages and who identify with their own distinctive sociocultural systems. Power and wealth are concentrated in the dominant sector of Iran’s society. The other sector is subordinated and marginalized.

This chapter proposes to show that reading Martin Amis’s representation of women in his London Trilogy today raises a number of issues related to the elusive nature of the author’s voice and values in the text. In Money and London Fields in particular, the violence women are submitted to by the male narrators and characters, even though partaking of the satire Amis brushes upon British society in the 1980s, tends to systematically portray women as victims. However, it must not be forgotten that Amis also introduces a number of female figures of relative empowerment in his novels, whose various forms of agency (murderees, authors, femmes fatales) are worth pointing out. The question as to the reality of this agency has to be raised, however, in the context of the general economy of the simulacrum which Amis’s novels denounce and promote. If Amis’s carnivalesque satires leave nothing unscathed and celebrate the death of all great narratives, how can the feminist narrative be applied to them? It seems that Amis’s own beliefs in the powers and of language and language games provide a key to beginning to answer this question.

Chapter 3 explores the physical and social boundaries of non-Muslim neighborhoods, which separated them from Muslim communities. It discusses both visible and invisible markers, such as dress codes and regulations activated when residents left these areas. Additional symbols of distinction included language and ritual practices. Non-Muslim schools are examined as institutions that bridged these boundaries, serving as heterotopias that encouraged interaction while enforcing discipline. The chapter also reexamines the idea of the “scapegoat” to analyze episodes of violence, especially during Moharram and Safar, highlighting how minority areas became particularly vulnerable to attack during crises like famine or political unrest.

When we think about inclusion in early childhood education, our minds often turn immediately to children with disabilities. While supporting children with diverse abilities remains crucial, true inclusion extends far beyond this single lens. Inclusion is fundamentally about creating environments where every child, regardless of their cultural background, family circumstances, language or life experiences, can belong, participate and thrive.