This book unsettles regular accounts of knowledge about language in several ways. The idea of assemblages allows for a flexibility about what languages are, not just in terms of having fuzzy linguistic boundaries but in terms of what constitutes language more generally. Languages are assembled from different elements, both linguistic elements as traditionally understood as well as items less commonly included. This is to approach language not as a pre-existing or circumscribed entity but rather as something produced in social action. Language from this point of view is embedded in diverse social and physical environments, distributed across the material world and part of our embodied existence. Once we ask whose version of language counts, we have to base any practical theory of language on what language is within a local ontology. This necessitates an engagement with language ideological assemblages and an understanding that languages are inevitably locally made assemblages (linguistic, semiotic and material). Applied linguistics as a practical assemblage is one way we can start to address the needs for a practical theory of language that can remain both plural and political.

This chapter establishes the strong link between coherence and legal reasoning. In so doing, it draws three main conclusions. A first conclusion is that legal reasoning is an instance of practical reasoning and practical deliberation. What this means, ultimately, is that when one reasons and argues about the content of the law one does not seek to discover truth in the same sense as when forming an opinion about the way things are in nature. Rather, the aim is to formulate a reasoned opinion and commit oneself to a specific course of action given the presence of a legal problem. A second conclusion is that, when understood as practical reasoning, legal reasoning exhibits certain coherence-related features. These are: (i) a web-like structure; (ii) the fact that rationality in legal reasoning does not depend only on logic but also on plausibility (or fit); and (iii) a purposive nature. A third conclusion is that coherence acts as a substantive and a methodological principle during legal reasoning, thus further confirming the dual dimension of coherence identified in Chapter 1.

Immunohistochemistry assays can be technically difficult. There are countless opportunities for errors. Some faults can be fixed, and this chapter contains a precise appraisal of common problems encountered along with suggested solutions. Incorporating both pre-analytic conundrums and analytic challenges from a staining perspective, it is written by a medical scientist able to think outside the square and offer resolutions ranging from the practical to the unconventional. All prescribed advice has been tested and proven successful. Suggesting corrective actions is an exercise in giving the worker options and workarounds for certain situations. Doing more with less and less testing material and lifting sections from slides to be used again when the paraffin block is exhausted are two examples of what can be achieved. Ultimately, it is about tuning protocols to make the most of the precious test tissue given whilst eliminating unnecessary wastage.

What did Plato mean when in Timaeus he characterised his account of the created world as an εἰκὼς μῦθος? The phrase is typically translated ‘a probable story’, ‘a likely tale’. Connotations that modern empiricist philosophy of science might attach to those expressions are misleading. Careful attention to the two terms Plato uses, and their resonances in previous Greek literature and thought, suggests instead the strikingly oxymoronic: ‘a rational/reasonable myth’. This is not, however, the reasonableness of deduction or of inference to the best explanation, but of the practical reasoning in which a supremely good designer would probably engage, assuming that he wanted to make his product as like himself as possible, but from materials with their own properties not of his making. Practical wisdom cannot aspire to the same standards of rigour as theoretical wisdom can. It can attempt only the most reasonable option given such constraints – as could any account of why that choice was made. Hence the importance of the Timaeus’ initial reminder of Socrates’ construction of a political order (witness the Republic), and its address to a company competent in politics as well as mathematics, interested no less in κόσμος as political order than in cosmology.

An explanation of the purpose of this book, highlighting what lies ahead. When I worked as a negotiator in international business transactions, I found much existing advice to be one-sided, focusing either on the win–win or the win–lose side of contracts when in reality most transactions consist of both. Part I: The basic paradox of the negotiation task means that we have to work with and against the other side. Because both sides face the paradox, they are jointly facing a dilemma: Their success is the result of their own choices as well as those of the other side. This leads to the third and deepest challenge: The ambivalence of thinking. Negotiators have to follow their own intuition as well as thinking deliberately to master the triple challenge of negotiation success. Part II: Each challenge sets up a specific trap for the learner. But if we identify these traps, they can turn into the three steps of negotiation learning, as Part III shows.

We negotiate a great deal – far more than we realise. Sometimes it goes smoothly, and sometimes it seems difficult. While there is much advice around about how to negotiate and be a winning negotiator, our actual experience does not seem as straightforward as books suggest. Why? Because negotiation is a complex process. This book grapples with these complexities while recognising the idiosyncrasies of both the negotiation process and the negotiator. There are some features of negotiation that are like its DNA and that need to be working well if the negotiation is to progress. There are also some tasks that need to be undertaken, tasks that make up the phases of the agreement-reaching process. Because the negotiation process is complex it is not easy to fully describe or understand one aspect of it without first understanding everything else – for example, how do we know what it means to be cooperative without first understanding what it means to be competitive (and vice versa)? So this opening chapter presents an overview of what the negotiation process involves which, we hope will lay a foundation for later chapters.