This chapter introduces the reader to the topic studied in the book, factual misinformation and its appeal in war. It poses the main research question of who believes in wartime misinformation and how people know what is happening in war. It then outlines the book’s central argument about the role of proximity and exposure to the fighting in constraining public misperceptions in conflict, and the methods and types of evidence used to test it. After clarifying some key concepts used in the book, it finally closes with a sketch of the manuscript’s main implications and an outline of its structure and contents.

This chapter provides the tools to compute catastrophe (CAT) risk, which represents a compound measure of the likelihood and magnitude of adverse consequences affecting structures, individuals, and valuable assets. The process consists of first establishing an inventory of assets (here real or simulated) exposed to potential hazards (exposure module). Estimating the expected damage resulting from a given hazard load (according to Chapter 2) is the second crucial step in the assessment process (vulnerability module). The application of damage functions to exposure data forms the basis for calculating loss estimates (loss module). To ensure consistency across perils, the mean damage ratio is used as the main measure for damage footprints D(x,y), with the final loss footprints simply expressed as L(x,y) = D(x,y) × ν(x,y), where ν(x,y) represents the exposure footprint. Damage functions are provided for various hazard loads: blasts (explosions and asteroid impacts), earthquakes, floods, hail, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and wind.

The language continuum is defined by the dimensions of language ability (from language talent to language disorder) and bilingual language proficiency (from monolingual to multilingual) in this chapter. Although the terms “language ability” and “proficiency” are often used interchangeably in the literature, we systematically differentiate these two dimensions in order to explain variations in speakers from different linguistic backgrounds. Cross-linguistic data are presented to strengthen this argument. The differentiation of these two language dimensions is important for professionals to prevent the over- and underdiagnosis of children who come from language minority groups or exhibit bilingual language disorder. A discussion of similarities in language acquisition between typically developing monolingual and bilingual first language speakers and between monolingual and bilingual children with developmental language disorder is included to highlight common features along the language dimensions. Within-subject approaches and different measures of assessment are described to support the classification of children from diverse linguistic environments.

This chapter describes how the quality and quantity of language input affects both children’s language ability and their cognitive control development. A nuanced exploration of the distinctions between input and intake as well as between input and exposure points to a complex pattern of interactions among these components and children’s communicative skills. The interactions among parental input, language environment, and the child’s age, as well as communicative abilities are bidirectional and affect children’s cognitive control skills, particularly working memory and interference control. The dynamic nature of caregiver – child interactions is also reflected in the manner parents adjust their language input based on their children’s communicative abilities. Parents of children with superior language skills used more elaborated language than did the parents of children with language delay, but those who participated in parental intervention increased the language and cognitive stimulation of their children.

Language use is a skill that requires exposure to language, feedback on usage, and practice. So children need exposure from expert speakers, feedback on the language being acquired, and on any errors children produce, and practice along the way. Languages differ, so the paths children follow within and across languages may vary, and some constructions may be harder to acquire in one language, easier in another. The goal is to learn to use language for communication. Language is essentially social, relying on common ground. Part I (Chapters 2-6) focusses on how adults talk with children; children’s analysis of the speech stream; their first production of words; and how they assign meanings to words. Part II (Chapters 7-11) focusses on children’s acquisition of structure: elaborations of information inside clauses, and combinations of clauses. They also rely on structure when coining new words. Part III (Chapters 12-14) looks at turn-taking, learning to be polite, persuasive, and informative, and how to tell stories. Children who hear two languages have two such systems to learn. Part IV (Chapters 15-16) summarizes evidence for biological specialization for language and considers how continuity and change are reflected in language processing.

Narrative exposure therapy (NET) is a procedure that is used to treat traumatic stress or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is evidence-based and is recommended as a treatment by NICE. Out of all the narrative approaches, NET has the best evidence for effectiveness. The manualised procedure has a number of stages, psychoeducation, the lifeline and then narrative exposure to the traumatic elements of memory. Finally, a narrative testimony is produced that has the potential to be used as evidence. NET has been widely used with refugees, other victims of war, sexual abuse and similar traumatic problems. The focus of the treatment is telling the stories of the traumatic and stressful events in a person's life, focusing on the emotions and feelings experienced when recalling these difficult situations.

Chapter 6 analyzes firm-level patterns of collective action and finds that law-abiding firms are more likely to experience collective action for interest-based demands. Using the strike map dataset of the China Labour Bulletin, it shows that interest-based protests are less likely to invite state repression, in part because they do not target state authorities. Contrary to the assumption that those protest that ask more than the legal minimum might be more politically threatening than law-based protests, the findings in this chapter demonstrate that interest-based protests rarely breach the physical boundary of individual firms.

Here I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s account of the way we experience others in and through their attitudes and engagements. I show how he rejects all accounts of originally experiencing of the other as an analogue, whether consciously or by way of analogical appresentation. He is keenly aware of the original and intercorporeal expressivity of others, in which our being animated is already our being expressive and in which our bodies can best be compared with works of art. What is expressed is inseparable from the way it is expressed. He goes on to show that our comportment at once expresses our unique styles and our original enculturation. Though we are exposed to the gazes of others, Merleau-Ponty makes a compelling case against Sartre that we can never be objectified as mere things. The experience of the other is of a unique and transcendent existent who can always shatter our preconceptions.

This chapter uses a close reading of The Lancet medical journal, and its radical, charismatic editor Thomas Wakley, to delineate the ‘high-water mark’ of Romantic sensibility as an emotional regime. It explores the ways in which Wakley and The Lancet leveraged the emotional politics of contemporary melodrama to critique the alleged nepotism and corruption of the London surgical elites. More especially, it analyses their campaign to expose instances of surgical incompetence at the city’s leading teaching hospitals, demonstrating the ways in which this strategy weaponised the emotions of anger, pity, and sympathy, and considering its implications for the cultural norms of an inchoate profession and for the ultimate stability of the emotional regime of Romantic sensibility.

The chapter focuses on education as a social variable. It critically reviews classical approaches and suggests news ways of integrating education as a variable in sociolinguistic research in Arabic. These approaches are illustrated by examples from qualitative and quatitative studies.