This chapter outlines how historical data can be used for research on language attitudes, concentrating on the field of historical sociolinguistics. It first discusses methodological challenges when working with historical data. Since historical (socio-)linguists cannot elicit data, they rely on the written and typically fragmented data available, which provide limited access to the attitudes of individuals. Furthermore, the boundaries between language attitudes and language ideologies are less sharply drawn in historical sociolinguistic research than in research on present-day data. Attitudes and ideologies are usually not addressed separately and often set in other linguistic contexts, such as language standardisation, linguistic purism, and prescriptivism. The second section of the chapter provides an overview of promising text sources that can be utilised to study language attitudes in the past, including normative texts, ego-documents, and statistical accounts, discussing both their potentials and drawbacks. The third section explains how these sources can be analysed, focussing on discourse-analytical and corpus-linguistic methods. To illustrate the main points made in this chapter, two case studies (one on German and one on Dutch) are presented. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of emerging trends in historical sociolinguistics, particularly the move towards studying language attitudes in multilingual settings.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of some fundamental theoretical questions – the when, the what, the who and the how – about spelling standardisation in Early Modern English. Spelling represents one of the most complex facets of linguistic standardisation and, for this reason, its essence escapes most of the theoretical labels that have been proposed so far for standardisation more broadly. Because of the complexities inherent to Early Modern English spelling, I suggest, we should intend the spelling system of Early Modern English as something in the process of standardising. The chapter also proposes the idea that, despite the complexities involving developments towards standardisation, Early Modern English spelling was not random and haphazard. In the closing section, a case is made for exploring large-scale patterns of development in Early Modern English spelling, and their relationship between theoreticians, schoolmasters, authors, readers and printers.

This chapter traces the practice of concluding peace treaties in Early Modern Europe, characterised by the increasing standardisation of clauses, as well as the influence of the concept of legal (or formal) war alongside that of just war. While just war retained an important role in the justification of war, treaty-making practice tended to rely on legal war, which produced a dualist logic in both war-waging and peace-making. Over time, the settlement of territorial conflicts moved from pre-existing claims and rights to conquest as a basis; dynastic legitimacy was subordinated to the raison d’etat. Increasingly standardised amnesty and restitution clauses, retractions of letters of reprisal, and provisions on prisoners of war likewise bore the influence of the legal war concept. Finally, to deal with the ever wider disruption caused by war, separate FCN treaties emerged alongside peace treaties. Later on, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles marked a brief return to a discriminatory concept of war, but its longer-lasting impact was on collective security and compensation of war damage for citizens.

Although an individual anaesthesia provider secures the patient’s airway, upstream organisational events will influence how airway management is actually performed in any institution. Decisions around equipment purchases, staff training, post-operative care arrangements and even departmental staffing will all influence how an anaesthetic is administered. While standardised equipment, and high quality protocols, guidelines and behaviours ensure better patient outcomes in the event of an airway emergency, this cannot be achieved without input from the institution to facilitate education and training for all airway team members. Organisations should learn from both critical incidents and examples of excellent practice, and have mechanisms to record airway events. Human factors (ergonomics) are a vital component of successful airway management and organisations should incorporate human factors education in their airway training programmes. Communication about patients known to have a difficult airway is vital and must be done effectively, especially when this involves communication between hospitals or even countries.

This chapter traces the sequence of smaller and larger dictionaries published in Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, drawing attention to the particular aspects of Australian language, society, culture, and environment that they document, and their association with the major phases in the evolution of Australian English. The earlier specialised dictionaries were compiled during the exonormative phases of Australian English, when Australians still deferred to British English as their main linguistic authority. In contrast, the comprehensive national dictionary (Macquarie Dictionary, 1981) benchmarks the endonormative phase, and becomes the reference point for Australian English as it achieves its linguistic independence. Meanwhile, the compilation of the Australian National Dictionary on Historical Principles (1988), through its association with Oxford University Press, has ensured that many Australianisms are registered in the second and third editions of the Oxford English Dictionary and acknowledged as elements of world English. Australian neologisms, especially informal words ending in –ie, have probably contributed to their greater use in northern hemisphere Englishes, and perhaps to the increasing colloquialisation of English worldwide.

This chapter deals with the process of standardisation as reflected in four major Caribbean dictionaries: the Dictionary of Jamaican English (1967, 1980), the Dictionary of Bahamian English (1980), the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (1996, 2003), the Dictionary of Creole/English of Trinidad and Tobago (2009), and a supplement to the DCEU, the New Register of Caribbean English Usage. In the first part of the chapter, the process of standardisation is discussed and Caribbean English (CE) is defined. The material in each dictionary is analysed with relevant examples reflecting the nature of CE. The fact that the term 'Caribbean English' is confined to the Commonwealth Caribbean in these works is noted, and the reasons that a Dutch island like Saba is mainly English-speaking are provided. Mention is made of the new Dictionary of Saban English, A Lee Chip (2016), and of its main objective as a reference work. The author concludes that all the dictionaries discussed are standardising agents, but that to carry out their role more effectively, they need to be seriously studied and fully incorporated into the Caribbean education system in general.

Chapter 12 examines the main tenets of the current EU action on accessibility for persons with disabilities and identify the most relevant provisions in the EU legal framework. It analyses the relevant accessibility legislation that predates the conclusion of the CRPD as well as more recent regulations and directives in the domains of the physical environment, transportation, information and communications. It also briefly discusses accessibility of cultural goods and services, including audiovisual services. Then, the chapter turns to an examination of the proposal for a European Accessibility Act, which is currently under discussion in the EU legislative institutions. Additionally, the chapter examines accessibility requirements in public procurement legislation, and succinctly addresses the role of standardisation in guaranteeing accessibility. Finally, it goes on to discuss the role of state aid law and policy in fostering accessibility and in promoting the rights of persons with disabilities.

Chapter 12 examines the main tenets of the current EU action on accessibility for persons with disabilities and identify the most relevant provisions in the EU legal framework. It analyses the relevant accessibility legislation that predates the conclusion of the CRPD as well as more recent regulations and directives in the domains of the physical environment, transportation, information and communications. It also briefly discusses accessibility of cultural goods and services, including audiovisual services. Then, the chapter turns to an examination of the proposal for a European Accessibility Act, which is currently under discussion in the EU legislative institutions. Additionally, the chapter examines accessibility requirements in public procurement legislation, and succinctly addresses the role of standardisation in guaranteeing accessibility. Finally, it goes on to discuss the role of state aid law and policy in fostering accessibility and in promoting the rights of persons with disabilities.

This chapter looks at the various institutions providing authority to standards as de jure or de facto regulatory instruments governing the internationalisation of services in contemporary capitalism. It provides background on the institutional environment of the WTO, the ISO setting, the European and the American systems, as well as on the prospects of the new generation of preferential trade agreements, such as the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). It shows the intricate and manifold ways in which the ambiguity of the world of standards supports its power across institutional specificities. This not only goes against the view of a compelling transatlantic divide. It also calls for mitigating speculations on the prospects of current and future mega-trade agreements against the setbacks initiated by the Trump administration. With or without deals, the ambiguity on which the authority of standards feeds the regulatory environment of capitalism is here to stay.

This concluding chapter ponders the non-conventional form of power that international standards reflect in the rising importance of services for contemporary capitalism. It discusses the three core arguments made in the book on the power of ambiguity, the ambiguity of standards and the rise of services, with distinct reference to the contrasted cases studied. It then draws broader implications of conceiving the power of service standards as a transnational hybrid authority defined by its constitutive ambiguity, rather than by sectorial or institutional specificities.