The focus of this chapter is the development of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence among second language learners during study abroad. In contrast to the foreign language classroom at home, study abroad offers learners a range of settings in which to engage in real-life intercultural encounters. These opportunities for social interaction, in turn, can have an impact on the learning of pragmatic and sociolinguistic dimensions of the second language, including speech acts and implicit meaning in the case of pragmatics and stylistic, and social factors in the case of sociolinguistics. Being able to accurately comprehend the intended message of utterances in the social context and to adequately express desired meanings are crucial components of intercultural competence. However, given that languages vary with regard to how pragmatic functions are realized and how sociolinguistic variation is signaled, the development of these areas in a second language represents a challenge for learners. While previous research suggests that study abroad can facilitate pragmatic and sociolinguistic development, such development is not guaranteed and the learning outcomes for individual learners are subject to a wide array of personal, social, and programmatic factors.

This chapter presents a comprehensive review of vague language studies from a pragmatic perspective. An utterance is vague when it conveys unspecific meaning. For example, “Many friends attended her birthday party,” how many is many? 20, 100 or 200? Our interpretation of “many” may vary from individual to individual, from context to context. Vague language is fluid, stretchable, and strategic. It consists of various types, including approximators, vague quantifiers, placeholder words, vague category identifiers, general terms, intensifiers, softeners, and epistemic stance markers. This chapter serves as a guide for understanding the characteristics of vague language. The discussion involves the conceptual frameworks and features of vague language, which are illustrated by examples and research drawn from intercultural corpora. This chapter reviews the theorization of vague language, its linguistic categories and pragmatic functions, vague language use in intercultural communication, and includes suggestions for future research. Vague language plays a crucial role in intercultural communication and its pragmatic functions, such as mitigation, politeness, and self-protection, form an important part of the strategic moves used in effective language interactions. This chapter provides an important contribution to the field of intercultural pragmatics.

The Cambridge Handbook of Childhood Multilingualism provides a state-of-the art view of the intra- and interdisciplinarity in linguistics, psychology, sociology, and education through a kaleidoscope of languages, countries, scholars, and cultures. The volume provides: (1) understanding that for most children multilingualism is the linguistic reality in which they grow; (2) an analysis of the effect of languages flowing from different sources, at different times and in different forms, on the uniqueness of child multilingualism processing beyond mono/bilingualism; (3) insights into diversity in the socialization of multilingual children; (4) elaboration of the triangulation of childhood, parenthood, and schooling as natural multilingualism-cultivating conditions motivated by internal and external forces; (5) an integrative approach to multilingual children’s development where the child at the center is cradled by multilingualism and languages, and (6) a focus on multilingualism as a capacity independent from mono/bilingualism. The different language typologies, in different countries and different continents, gathered in this volume tease out what is universal to childhood multilingualism as an agent of “new linguistic realities.”

Chapter 5 introduces the reader to the remarkable world of the Neandertal, discussing some of the most controversial issues relating to this species of Homo: its emergence, lifeways and ultimate extinction. It introduces cutting-edge ideas about how the probable encounters between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans, also present in the same timeframe and territories, might have been.

Research opportunities for undergraduate engineers vary widely in topics, tasks, and organization, yet they all convey knowledge and practices that are fundamental to engineering work and culture. This chapter outlines that engineering worldview and how it shapes undergraduate research opportunities, and then recommends best practices for undergraduate research in engineering.

Emotional regulation is one of the skills children develop in early childhood, and norms of social and emotional behaviour are explicitly taught and implicitly embedded in early childhood curricula. This chapter discusses emotion socialization processes in preschool settings. It outlines how various emotions (sadness, laughter, empathy, compassion and others) are displayed and interpreted in social interaction by using language and embodied resources. The chapter provides examples of how emotion socialization is configured by teachers and children in early childhood education in various countries worldwide.

The chapter deals with the assignment of cases to reporting judges and judicial formations at ECJ. EU lawyers generally consider the ECJ’s system of case assignment to be one of the most problematic features in the court’s decision-making process. They perceive a strong tension with the right to a fair trial. The aim of this chapter is to understand why the court maintains a system that has been under severe attack for a long time. By closely analysing the practice of case assignment between 2003 and 2019, charting assignment profiles of individual judges, the chapter argues that the ECJ’s assignment system is a key mechanism for the court’s institutional success. It has allowed the court to maintain a sense of common purpose, a strong and persistent idea of its mandate as a guardian of the effectiveness and primacy of EU law. The chapter identifies three key functions case assignment performs. First, supporting jurisprudential stability and continuity by creating an elite group of judges who writes the bulk of the most important ECJ decisions. Second, integrating new ECJ judges through gradually assigning them more difficult cases thereby structuring a learning process for becoming a full-fledged ECJ judge. And third, the ECJ’s system of case assignment has helped to maintain what is generally lost in courts of the ECJ’s size: a place where all twenty-seven ECJ judges and eleven Advocates General are informed on all incoming cases, jointly engage in systematizing the ECJ’s case law and framing the court’s agenda.

The purpose of this study is to explore the reflections, experiences, and perspectives of Black junior faculty as they find their voice and identity within the academy. This study integrates concepts of resiliency (Prince-Embury, 2011), Afrocentric thought (Johnson, 2001), and faculty socialization and fit (Bilyalov, 2018; Richards & Templin, 2018; Thandi-Sule, 2014) to formulate a faculty enculturation framework. Employing a qualitative approach informed by narrative and ethnographic principles, we seek to know how Black junior faculty navigate predominantly White institutions of higher education (PWIs). As a fictional re-storying, we utilize thematic analysis to integrate the shared experiences of Black junior faculty. This study finds four essential themes that capture the shared experiences of Black Junior faculty at PWIs: (a) dual battles, (b) microinvalidations, (c) doctoral socialization, and (d) protected spaces. The findings of this study provide implications to university administration to reimagine organizational engagement and faculty socialization.

Bobby once owned twenty-two cars. In fact, he had so many cars that he had to store them “everywhere, in my garages, friends’ and relative’s garages” (Bloch, Commuri, and Arnold 2009, 54). Bobby, as his twenty-two cars might suggest, is deeply involved in cars and auto-repair. He attributes his deep involvement to his childhood interactions with his father, who, Bobby recalls, also loved cars. When he owned the twenty-two cars, Bobby says, “My two sons were old enough to enjoy cars as well and they too were hooked” (Bloch, Commuri, and Arnold 2009, 54).

The night of the 2016 presidential election, eight-year-old Miriam was, according to her father, “inconsolable.” Miriam, as her father Eli Shearn told The Washington Post some four years later, had become very engaged in the 2016 presidential campaign – something that Shearn had encouraged (Rubin 2020). Miriam’s parents were strong supporters of then-Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, setting up Miriam with red and blue crayons to watch the votes come in on election night. When Clinton lost the election to Republican Donald Trump, Miriam went to bed crying. Shearn told The Post he remembered thinking: “Why did I get her so invested in this?”

Chapter 4 explores the origins of group empathy. We investigate the association of group empathy with key socio-demographic factors and the ensuing life experiences. Specifically, we find that minorities, females, the educated, and older generations display higher levels of group empathy. The life experiences that spring from these socio-demographic contexts – particularly, exposure to discrimination, the quality and quantity of contact with other groups, and perceptions of intergroup economic competition – also predict group empathy and help explain socio-demographic differences on group empathy levels. The chapter also empirically tests predictions about the link between ingroup identification and outgroup empathy among whites, blacks, and Latinos. Social Identity Theory would predict ingroup attachment to be negatively linked to outgroup empathy across all groups. However, Group Empathy Theory predicts outgroup empathy should be positively linked with ingroup identity among nonwhites. This is exactly what we find. This finding challenges one of the basic assumptions of SIT given that the underlying mechanism of ingroup–outgroup bias is different for whites than it is for minorities.