Subjektive und objektive Daten in der Sprachwandelforschung.

Language change is generally regarded as change of linguistic items or of the language system. In this sense it might be described and explained by the observation of varying use and evaluation of language. Developments concerning the conditions of use and the characteristics of evaluation are rarely regarded as cases of language change itself. Recently, however, there seems to be a shift towards a wider understanding of language change, distinguishing change of structure, use and evaluation. This shift is accompanied by the distinction of subjective and objective language data. Studies that combine objective and subjective data enable a comprehensive view of the characteristics and causes of language change. The present paper uses data from speakers of two different age groups from the Grafschaft Bentheim district on the German-Dutch border to illustrate the mutual dependency of structural and evaluative language change. The investigation will be carried out in an apparent-time-analysis based on a translation tasks (as a type of objective data) and semantic differentials (subjective data). Although the attested differences between the age groups turned out to be comparatively small, there are correlations between the results regarding subjective and objective data to be stated.

Valiko Jugeli and the Сult of the People’s Guard in Georgia

This article looks at the semiofficial cult of the Red (People’s) Guard in Georgia from 1917 to 1921. The guard originated in the chaos and uncertainty of late 1917 and played a key role in securing the power of Noy Zhordania and the social democrats in Georgia against Bolshevik and other challenges. It also served as the power base for its undisputed leader, Valiko Jugeli. The official and party press fostered a heroic cult around the Guard, its exploits, and its leadership, reflected in Jugeli’s diary-style memoir, A Heavy Cross (1920). The guard’s cultivated image was selfless, politically conscious, internationalist, and devoted to the revolution. Its many critics saw it as thuggish, undisciplined, chauvinistic, corrupt, and militarily ineffective. The mutual dependency between Zhordania and Jugeli ensured that the guard was politically untouchable in Georgia. The need to maintain the loyalty of the guard, and gain the support of Jugeli, was at times a crucial factor in the politics of the country. Ultimately, the power and influence of the guard eroded the effectiveness of Georgia’s armed forces, and its treatment of national minorities, particularly Armenians and Ossetians, helped Bolsheviks inside and outside Georgia undermine and then overthrow the Democratic Republic. After the Sovietisation of Georgia in 1921, the record of the guard was used to discredit the social democrats’ democratic credentials domestically and internationally. Since around 1990, the guards’ South Ossetia campaigns of 1918–1920 have been used to underpin the area’s claims for independence from rule by Tbilisi.

People Management

The central issue in this chapter is people management in public organizations. That is, managers’ implementation of HR practices and their leadership behavior in supporting the employees they supervise at work. This chapter focuses on five key aspects related to HRM and leadership in a public sector context. First, the historical move from personnel management to HRM and leadership. Second, the distinction between external and internal management and this chapter’s focus on internal management. Third, the role of middle and frontline leaders in the implementation of policies and their responsibility for turning general policies into results. Fourth, the mutual dependency between HRM policies and leadership. Fifth, the distinction between intended, implemented, and perceived HRM and leadership. This chapter systematically draws on both the general HRM and leadership bodies of literature, and specifies these insights to the public sector context whenever possible.

Caring for each other: a rapid review of how mutual dependency is challenged by advanced illness

This review explores factors sustaining and threatening couples’ relationships when both have advanced illness. Qualitative studies exploring relationships between two people in a marriage/partnership with advanced illness are included. A total of 12 articles are included. Internal enabling factors, external enabling factors and threatening factors are identified. However, there is limited evidence internationally on factors sustaining these relationships and crisis factors. Little is known about the impact of crises on couples and the process of change from mutual dependency to carer and cared for. The article concludes that shifts by services towards holistic care focused on the couple’s needs are indicated.

Humanism in Africa

This chapter shows that the idea of humanism in contemporary African thought takes as its backdrop the historical interaction between Africa and foreign cultural and political invasions of the continent since the Middle Ages. Christianity and Islam, before European political invasion, introduced novel concepts and values of the human person and human life, introducing with them new political and social concepts and structures. The emerging synchrony and sometimes tensions between these and indigenous African worldviews have seen African philosophers and political visionaries reaching out to indigenous African modes of thought, whether secular or with some supernatural inclinations, as reservoirs of better concepts of human nature that will heal a world broken by unsound concepts of human nature that not only resulted in unsound epistemological and other philosophical theories, but also produced the injustices of domination, racism, and inequality across the globe. Grounded in the idea of the relational nature of humans among themselves and with nature, African philosophers and thinkers have argued that the well-being of human and non-human reality depends on developing and defending the values of mutual dependency.

Gulf states and Islamist responses to COVID-19: a changing relationship

This article focuses on the outbreak of COVID-19 in the Gulf and examines how different responses to the pandemic are affecting the relationship between state institutions and Islamist actors. Several states and regimes are attempting to contain the spread of COVID-19 by imposing increasingly authoritarian measures and tightening social control, which in turn is causing a renewed wave of social unrest. The article shows how, in this increasingly unstable context, the relationships between state institutions and Islamist actors are developing along two main trends.As a response to the pandemic, states in the Gulf are increasingly relying on the mobilisation of Islamic institutions and religious bodies to support lockdown and isolation policies, enlisting Islamic authority to compensate for the decreasing levels of popular trust in the regime. The tightening of authoritarian measures is bringing pre-existing tensions between Islamists and authorities back to the fore, resulting in an increased crackdown on religious opposition actors ad movements. This article shows that, while the extent to which these trends are developing depends on the national context under analysis, different state reactions to COVID-19 are already drastically altering the relationship between political institutions and Islamic ones, affecting both domestic and regional balances of power and highlighting the mutual dependency between religion and politics in the Gulf.