This chapter discusses standardisation as a major factor in sociolinguistic history. After a brief dicussion of basic concepts such as diglossia, Ausbau, Abstand and diaglossia, we introduce the Haugen model, including the key concepts of selection, codification, elaboration and acceptance. We go on to argue that the later introduced concept of implementation is crucial in analyses of the interaction of norms and language use in the language community. Focusing on this interaction, and based on case studies from English and Dutch, three scenarios are distinguished: prescriptive influence, prescriptive delay and concurrent prescriptivism. The chapter ends by situating the interaction of norms and usage into the wider framework of the total linguistic fact as developed by Silverstein.

Thriving is uniquely manifested across different animal species. This chapter emphasises that each species has evolved distinct physiological and psychological mechanisms tailored to their specific environmental interactions, which are crucial for their ability to thrive.

The chapter outlines how these species-specific traits dictate the natural behaviours and cognitive functions of animals, highlighting the importance of understanding these unique characteristics to ensure proper care and welfare in captivity. It discusses the challenges and barriers each species may face in artificial environments and how these can be mitigated to support their well-being.

Furthermore, the chapter explores the concept of ‘thriving’ not just as survival but as a holistic state where an animal’s physiological, psychological, and ecological needs are fully met. This includes the ability to exhibit natural behaviours and interact with the environment in a way that promotes their overall health and vitality.

By providing a detailed analysis of species-specific thriving, this chapter serves as a crucial foundation for developing effective animal welfare practices that are tailored to the unique needs of each species, ensuring that they not only survive but truly thrive in human care.

Testing and assessment have a long history in Greece. External hiring in the Greek public sector is carried out by the Supreme Council for the Selection of Personnel, an independent human resource management (HRM) body that currently runs employee selection procedures with the use of employment tests. In the private sector, employee assessment methods are used to a much greater extent than in the public sector. Greece’s entry into the European Union in 1981, as well as the competition from foreign companies, have further challenged HRM practices and methods used in staffing. Hiring processes have been enhanced by the inclusion of additional selection stages, such as semi-structured interviews, group interviews, and initial screening via job boards to augment the level of standardization and reduce incidents of bias. Greece’s entry into the EU has also led to the gradual addition of new laws to the Greek constitution aimed at establishing and enhancing equal opportunities in work, employment, and education. However, there are no specific guidelines implemented by psychological or HRM associations that specifically address bias and fairness in employee recruitment and selection processes.

Nigeria’s diverse history and ethnic diversity have shaped the country’s current understanding of bias and fairness, including issues relating to employment. This chapter focuses on employment testing bias and fairness in Nigeria. When making employment decisions, it is a common occurrence, albeit not a legally permissible one, to have factors such as age, sex, political beliefs, religion, ethnicity, and disability taken into account. Nigeria’s discrimination laws cover all employers, third parties, and licensure. However, Nigerian discrimination adjudication has a narrow purview. For instance, there are no clear standards for validity evidence, no rules for demonstrating disparate impact, no shifting of the burden of proof, and no recognition of disproportionate impact. The limited use of professionally designed selection processes also means that bias-related concerns receive little attention. Information about the impact of the legal environment on industrial and organizational psychology is similarly lacking. Nonetheless, there are initiatives aimed at professionalizing psychology in the nation, which should increase the reliability and validity of selection procedures.

How to communicate the world of your story. The traditional character portrait and scene-setting description contrasted with the dominant contemporary development of character and context as the plot evolves. The function of description. Avoiding inappropriate lyricism. Immersion in time and place; repurposing our own experience and editing for focus. The subjective nature of description. Conveying, rather than merely describing, emotion, atmosphere, environment. The familiar and the unfamiliar. The effect of description on pace; discerning the extent and necessity for description. Embedding description in action. Using telling details.

Health insurance does not work well when individuals have more information about illness than the insurer. Two problems arise as a consequence of this information gap. Moral hazard, which arises when individuals know more about their current needs than the insurer, generates an overutilization of care services. Adverse selection, caused by insureds having more information about future risk than insurers, leads high-risk individuals to buy high coverage (at a high premium) and low-risk individuals to buy lower coverage than optimal. This chapter covers these market failures and presents some evidence and thoughts about policies that have been used to reduce their negative effect, such as cost-sharing for dealing with moral hazard, and mandates and cross-subsidies for buying high coverage. I end by arguing that dealing with selection should not be a top priority.

The issue of international membership introduces the related issue of international rights holding. International rights holding amounts to being “in”—that is, being recognized as legitimate and, as such, as having rights. But the membership process through which a collective actor gets “in” and comes to enjoy the status of rights holder also has a selective and exclusionary character. There is an interrelated process of denial of rights holding for other collective actors. An illustration of how international membership associated with international rights holding can have this selective and excluding effect is the impact of international law on rights holding in the framework of colonialism—an impact so significant that it continues to have a legacy today. Thus, the selective character of international membership has a cost for international rights holding not simply for the societies at odds with the requirements of statehood but also for their individual members.

We go back in history and discuss the historical dimension of sociolinguistics. We focus on life in the British Isles in the Early Modern period and discover that most of the British population spoke regional and social varieties. As a result of profound changes in society, the history of English is manifold and more diverse than is suggested by a Standard-oriented lens only. We look into language standardization in Late Modern England (1600–1900) and discuss the validity of data, as special care needs to be taken when assessing written data from times when education and schooling were a rare privilege. We present English language ideologies in general, particularly relating to standardization and the persistence of dialect variation. We end with a presentation of groundbreaking studies in English historical sociolinguistics to show how one can gain insights into variation and change despite methodological challenges.

In order to situate the women who worked in royal and aristocratic households in their proper context, the first chapter explores household composition, demonstrating similarities of servant arrangements at all levels of elite society even though household size varied at different status gradations. Over time, households of every status level grew, offering further career opportunities, especially since elite households became more welcoming to women in the late fourteenth century, even though throughout the Middle Ages they remained almost exclusively male domains. This chapter argues that female servants gained their positions through kinship and patronage opportunities that favored their placement and promotion. In investigating the qualities that employers desired in their servants, I contend that they chose attendants who demonstrated useful skills, good character, and pleasing appearance. This chapter reveals that turnover occurred due to death, retirement, marriage (which did not necessitate retirement), dismissal, or transition to different households, and seems to have been a frequent aspect of life for a lady-in-waiting, yet I also assert that a minority of attendants served their ladies for long durations, at least a decade or more.