The border between mainland China and Hong Kong has become one of the world's most fascinating linguistic divides. On one side lies the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen, stretching the entire length of the border – an extraordinary urban development which in many ways epitomises the recent urbanisation of modern China. On the other side lies the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong (see Figure 1). It is not possible to cross from Hong Kong to mainland China by land without passing through one of the Shenzhen checkpoints.

Some innovative quotative usage among young people in London. In this article, Levey looks at its use in a south-eastern variety of English, specifically in narratives of personal experience by primary-school children in an outer London borough.

In ET6, Gillian Kay described how Japanese absorbs and re-shapes the words of English. There is, however, another trend in Japan, in which English is used as a social and commercial accessory.

A case study of the presence of English in shop and service names in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The use of English as a trademark of modernity and elitism in the commercial contexts in Uzbekistan is a new phenomenon which has emerged as Uzbekistan entered the global village as an independent and developing country in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While during the Cold War (1947–1991) and the Soviet era by and large, English was considered ‘the language of Western imperialism’ (Dushku, 1998), today it is seen as a symbol of advanced education, modernity, prestige, and elitism. In order to have a better understanding of how common and widespread English is on the streets and commercial contexts of Uzbekistan, this study examines the use of written English in shop signs and different service names.

Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian country, shares its borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan.

The UK's June 2016 decision to withdraw from the European Union, popularly referred to as Brexit, has had a major political, financial and economic impact worldwide. However, the impact was also linguistic as this event has generated a myriad of neologisms in English, such as breferendum, brexiteer, Brexitsphere, regrexit or Brexitology. The aim of the present study is to give a general overview of these new words, to establish the predominant word-formational patterns as well as to point out the creativity and speed with which speakers of English have reacted linguistically to this change in the socio-political context.

Saudi English (also called ‘Arabicised-English’ by Al-Shurafa, 2009) is probably one of the least studied varieties among the ‘New Englishes’. This paper aims to provide an introduction to the main syntactic features of the variety. In order to do this I will use the list of features discernible in varieties of English world-wide as ascertained by two scholars working actively on the typology of the different Englishes, Kortmann & Szmrecsanyi (2004). They use the term ‘angloversals’ for recurrent non-standard features widely found in English across the globe. This paper investigates three such ‘angloversal’ features which I believe to be widespread in Saudi Arabia: (a) #57: deletion of be; (b) #17: irregular use of articles; and (c) #53: invariant present tense forms due to zero marking for the third person singular (Kortmann & Szmrecsanyi 2004: 1146–7). This article also aims to study the effects of the Arabic substrate on the variety of English spoken in Saudi Arabia. The occurrence of the features is investigated among different strata in the society.

This study aims to explore university English teachers' perceptions of the role of English today in Taiwan from two aspects – the ownership of English and acquiring target language culture in the English language classroom. The concept of English as an international language (EIL) or English as a lingua franca (ELF) has been discussed extensively in the ELT field for many years. Theoretically the concept promotes the idea that English is no longer a possession of any particular English-speaking countries and that there are many different varieties of Englishes. Since teachers are an important – if not the most important – influence in the language classroom, their perceptions are likely to affect the students profoundly. In spite of the theoretical discussion of EIL, in reality, what do university English teachers in Taiwan think about the role of English today? In the study, five experienced teachers were invited for a focus group interview to discuss these issues. The results suggest that university English teachers in Taiwan are facing a dilemma and struggle to follow the notion of EIL (or ELF) in the classroom.

English, in the course of its progressive evolution and global spread, has had contacts with different languages (Hogg & Denison, 2006) which have led to the emergence of native and non-native varieties spoken in different countries of the world. This, in part, has resulted in variable pronunciations of English lexical items, such as anti- pronounced as /ænti/ or /æntaɪ/ at the segmental level and adult as /'ædʌlt/ or /ə'dʌlt/ at the suprasegmental level of stress (Hogg & Denison, 2006). In addition to this, phonological free variation in English has been motivated by phonetic processes, phonological changes and sociolinguistic factors, among others (Shitara, 1993; Mompean, 2010).

For the last three decades, globalization has been a major theme of sociolinguistics and studies of multilingualism, in keeping with large scale changes evident in late-modern societies (Blommaert, 2010). One of several stances within this research is the importance accorded to English in processes of linguistic globalization (see Leung et al, 2009). Three theoretical stances in particular have dealt with English globalization: World Englishes (e.g. Kachru, 1986), Linguistic Imperialism (e.g. Phillipson, 1992) and more recently Global Englishes within a context of modern-day rapid transport, electronic media, cultural hybridities and economic migration (Pennycook, 2007). All three approaches emphasise different aspects of the nature of English insertion in multilingual contexts.

This study explores how learning English among one subset of English learners, Asian female international students at US colleges, contributes to the larger project of advancing gender equality. Using their narratives, we ask why Asian female international students invest so much of their identities and effort into learning English. We discuss the ways in which their endeavours may even silently promote the development of English as a gender-neutral language. The population of Asian students offers a compelling case of how the English language is potentially transformed via its spread to this English learner population and how it presents new avenues for identity formation for the growing number of female English users worldwide (cf. Brutt-Griffler, 2010: 232).

The nature and prospects of one of Africa's ‘new Englishes’

Research on language contact phenomena (language switching and mixing, borrowing) shows that in a multilingual setting people's choice of language(s) is governed not simply by the need to be understood. Other factors play a role. These include various forms of positioning: the language, dialect, accent a speaker chooses for an interaction consciously or unconsciously displays particular aspects of his or her actual or aspired identity. These aspects cover, for example, being (or not being) educated/religious/from a particular region or social grouping. They position the speaker in relation to the person being spoken to. They may also indicate to the addressee not only how the speaker perceives him or her (for example as someone with particular background or attributes) but also as someone with particular aspirations. In multilingual societies language choice in commercial signage carries out similar positioning in addition to giving information about products or services: being understood is not always the sign producer's only or chief consideration. He or she needs to trigger aspects of identity and aspiration that are likely to create a desire for whatever is being sold. In this paper we focus on how English is used in relation to other languages in signage, mainly commercial signage, in two multilingual cities that are the centres of an ongoing research project on bilingual and multilingual signage: Delhi and Cape Town.

A consideration of thingummies, doohickeys and other vague words.

In Vietnam, English has been held in high regard since the country embarked on its economic reform known as Doi Moi (Renewal) in 1986 (Ngo, 2018a; Nguyen, 2016). Yet, over the past decades, the country's English teaching sector has consistently been underperforming (Le, in press; Ngo, 2018a, 2018b; Nguyen, 2016; Nguyen & Nguyen, 2019).

With the popularisation of the Internet, the use of e-mails and computer-based chats (CBCs) has increased dramatically among university students. An interesting feature of such communication, however, is that a written medium is treated like speech (cf. Maynor, 1994). Conversations turn into notes where grammatical accuracy and conventional formalities take a backseat to instant communication. In the case of on-campus CBCs, informality and a certain disregard of the conventions of standard English are all the more manifest.

It is commonly believed in Hong Kong that this general freedom to write ‘bad English’ has encouraged the habit of randomly incorporating Cantonese words into English e-mails. Yet an examination of students' e-mails and icq (‘I Seek You’) communications reveals that far from ‘polluting’ their English by substituting Cantonese words haphazardly for English ones, or by applying Cantonese structures to their English writing, students tend to incorporate certain kinds of Cantonese words systematically into their texts for specific identifiable purposes.

Most popular discussions of varieties of English in Appalachia (USA) focus only on vernacular dialect features, suggesting that these hallmark characteristics are common for ‘true’ mountain folk (Dial, 1972). Naturally, the reality of the dialects in this region is more complex and subdued than the stereotype. While traditional features, such as a-prefixing (e.g. she is a-working), have played a role in the region, most stereotypical, Appalachian dialect features are fading from usage today (Hazen, 2006). Appalachia is a long region divided into numerous sections. Depending on the sources consulted, the regional divisions are quite staggering in their differences. For some, the region of Appalachia can stretch as far north as New York and as far south as Mississippi, including parts of 13 states (Appalachian Regional Commission). Other definitions limit the geography to a much smaller range (Wolfram & Christian, 1976). Aware of this problem, we have chosen to focus on one region universally accepted as part of Appalachia: West Virginia. Geographically, the state fits entirely within the boundaries of all definitions of the region. Likewise, West Virginia also fits the socio-economic profile most commonly associated with Appalachia. To provide the most comprehensive picture possible, we present a brief overview of English in West Virginia, followed by an empirical examination of 10 dialect features. The import of this empirical investigation is that the West Virginia vernacular of the twenty-first century has changed from its roots at the beginning of the twentieth century.

An update on the world's newest lexicographical services. The computer and the Internet have become indispensable to the lives of educated people. As a result, ways of obtaining information have greatly changed. The readership of the printed media appears to have been gradually decreasing, something that may also happen with dictionaries. It has for example been noted that three mediums for dictionaries — paper, electronic gadgets, and the Internet — are now about equally popular with students. Gone therefore are the days when paper dictionaries dominated the reference world. For example, more than 70% of students interviewed at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim that they use e-dictionaries more often than the traditional bulky paper products: among them, the most ‘bookmarked’ is the online version of the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Online dictionaries are now therefore the main force in word reference.

An analysis of home page spellings in relation to the accents they evoke. One of the most obvious developments connected with modern electronic communication is the opening up of an area of publicly visible language from what Sebba (2003a) calls the partially regulated zone of spelling. This zone appears in such synchronous media as instant messaging, chatrooms and ICQ (‘I seek you’) and asynchronous ones including SMS text messages, blogs, email and homepages.

Excerpts from the ‘language biographies’ of children of Asian immigrants who have grown up in America

The representation of gender in foreign language teaching has attracted the attention of many scholars and has been investigated in different parts of the world. Due to its potential for deep impact on pupils, it is a matter of great concern. Discrimination against a gender group in coursebooks can lead to harmful impacts on pupils' development as well as on their future academic and career (Lee, 2018). The lack of representation of females in language coursebooks may seriously harm their ability to understand the target language as well as its culture (Rifkin, 1998).