This essay emerges from an ongoing conversation between us while collaborating on various projects that have explored the role that English plays in people's lives. One of us is an English teacher educator from Australia, the other an EFL educator from Iran now working in Hong Kong. Our conversation prompted us to reflect on English as a medium of…

Recent research has shown that a distinct variety of American Sign Language, known as Black ASL, developed in the segregated schools for deaf African Americans in the US South during the pre-civil rights era. Research has also shown that in some respects Black ASL is closer than most white varieties to the standard taught in ASL classes and found…

This paper proposes a tripartite model describing the lexical categories across different registers and levels of formality in the Cantonese language in contemporary Hong Kong: (1) native Cantonese words; (2) Sino-Cantonese words, and (3) Anglo-Cantonese words. Examples of authentic Cantonese use were used to illustrate the histories and etymology…

With the expanding use of English around the world, it is important to understand various stakeholders' attitudes towards it from a Global Englishes (GE) perspective. The GE perspective has challenged native speakerism and recognized the multilingual nature of the English language. In particular, a GE perspective leads to the sustainable…

Previous research in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has revealed that deviations in lexicogrammar are not always random, but a result of underlying communicative processes (Cogo & Dewey, 2012; Guziurová, 2020; Jafari, 2021; Ranta, 2013, 2022). Most previous studies relied upon spoken interactions, particularly in business and academic…

The present study aims to investigate the socio- and applied linguistic functions and frequency of lecturers' language behaviors (code-switching (CS), code-mixing (CM), and translanguaging) in terms of showing lecturers' social identity in the Georgian educational discourse, namely, in teaching Business English (English for Specific Purposes -…

The various facets and networks of social media have had significantly phenomenal influence on the individual life and on the societal, economic, and political status of their users. The linguistic discourse of interlocutors on social media has also been influenced. The current study aims at measuring how the English language learning process of…

This paper seeks to intellectually stimulate researchers who are interested in the history of grammar and the long-standing debate about prescriptivism. Contrary to popular belief, there are scholars who still put forward arguments about the significant role played by prescriptive grammar in the development of Modern Standard English. Such…

This study aims to advance the understanding of sociolinguistic competence among near-native speakers and to further knowledge about the acquisition of variable structures. We conduct a quantitative analysis of variable future-time expression in informal conversations between near-native and native speakers of French. In addition to examining…

Usage of definite and indefinite articles is known to vary across different varieties of English, especially in the outer circle. As a semantic/pragmatic category, definiteness is notoriously slippery to define -- is it uniqueness, familiarity, inclusiveness or identifiability? Literature has shown that the lack of an agreed definition can…

The aim of this study is to find out more about how the immigrant community is being integrated socio-linguistically into the city of Madrid. It takes as its premise that integration is a bi-directional process conditioned directly by the beliefs, values and attitudes of both the immigrant and the host communities (Moreno Fernández, Francisco.…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specific register that adults use to address infants, and it is characterised by prosodic exaggeration and lexical and syntactic simplification. Several authors have underlined that this simplified speech becomes more complex according to the infant's age. However, there is a lack of studies on lexical and…

English language teachers who work with children in schools need knowledge about how English works to construct and present knowledge. This article discusses three aspects of that knowledge: understanding variation in the registers needed to engage in different classroom tasks, being able to identify language features used in the disciplinary…

This study aims to examine the opinions of teacher candidates on the use of local dialect. 50 teacher candidates, who attended Kafkas, Kilis 7 Aralik and Atatürk Universities in 2019-2020 academic year from different branches and class levels, were chosen according to convenience sampling, and participated in the study which was designed as…

Language documentation efforts are most often concerned with the adult language and usually do not include the language used by and with children. Essential parts of the natural linguistic behaviour of communities thus remain undocumented, and a growing body of literature explores what language documentation, language maintenance, and language…