The worldwide spread of English has recently received much interest. Issues relating to the multifaceted roles of English around the world have been highlighted and purist positions about English challenged. In particular (a) the assumption that British English is the only valid standard of English; and (b) the notion that the "native speaker" is…

Scholars tend to explain or predict China English's rhetorical strategies on the basis of Chinese discourse and cultural preferences. This inference model, I argue, falls short in studying the Chinese variety of English because, first, it essentializes both China English and Chinese, treating their discursive strategies as two easily…

Responds to a previous article criticizing the variation models of second-language acquisition (SLA), and argues that the variation models can and do explain (SLA) and that any adequate model of SLA should take interlanguage into account. (Author/VWL)

Skutnabb-Kangas, Kontra, and Phillipson's response to Wee (2005) only serves to highlight a whole new set of problems with the LHRs paradigm while failing to make any inroads towards resolving the earlier ones. For example, they adopt a "legal perspective" in relation to Singlish that is at odds with the way they would presumably wish to…

Proposes a revision and expansion of Schumann's (1978b) model of pidginization as it relates to second language learning. A distinction is made between sociocultural aspects of the pidginization cycle and the acquisitional processes of pidginization, creolization, and decreolization. (Author/AM)

Deals with the construct of educated native speaker (ENS) speech, which constitutes the implicit target norm in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines. It is argued that, in classroom foreign language instruction, such a target is too restrictive, and as an alternative, a multitarget model of language…

Aristotle's four virtues of style--clarity, propriety, dignity, and purity--can serve as a useful model for teaching and for research in linguistic style. These virtues reflect the writer's careful consideration of the subject, the audience, the writer's voice, and the linguistic community for the writing. Unfortunately, these virtues have fallen…

Suggests that Kachru' model representing English worldwide must adapt by (1) moving away from a focus on nation-states in favor of a sociolinguistic focus on English-speaking communities wherever they are found and (2) recognizing that fundamental differences across contexts for English worldwide cannot be glossed over in support of specific…

Critiques Pienemann and Johnston (1987), an influential model of the acquisition of English as a second language (ESL) morphology. The article demonstrates that their proposals are incompatible with syntactic analyses of word formation and emphasizes that second language researchers must ensure that models of second language acquisition are…

Ellis's target article suggests that language processing is based on frequency and probabilistic knowledge and that language learning is implicit. These findings are consistent with those of SLA researchers working within a variationist framework (e.g., Tarone, 1985; Bayley & Preston, 1996). This paper provides a brief overview of this research…

Challenges existing assumptions about literacy and literacy learning in an effort to both demonstrate and explore the transactive potentials of theory and methodology in the study of literacy. (HOD)

Discusses the evolution of what is meant by "good" English in the classroom, arguing that the overall model of English that is presented to students, and by which their English is evaluated, ought to be considered in pragmatic rather than a priori terms. (19 references) (MDM)

This paper focuses on a language variation model that incorporates a number of concepts from linguistic and rhetorical studies. The model views language variation as a product of two correlating causes: one, the user and his or her personal, regional, and social dialect; and the other, the user's use of the language in terms of such discourse…