Do Ghanaians have, or even want, a distinctive ‘Ghanaian English’?

A survey of the expansion of English teaching, learning and use in the Arab West, with particular regard to Tunisia

A lexicographer questions the usefulness of phonetic symbols as aids to pronunciation in dictionaries, and offers an alternative approach

A comprehensive and innovative review of speech patterns in West, East and Southern Africa

How do people choose a language when they are proficient in more than one language? This research sheds light on language choice, English use in particular, in diplomacy where an individual speaks primarily for negotiation on behalf of an organization or a community. Nick (2001: 39) argued that ‘language is not a simple tool … but very often the very essence of the diplomatic vocation’. Despite its importance, little has been investigated about language choice in diplomatic meetings (Finsen, 2016). Wodak, Krzyzanowski and Forchtner (2012), one of the few studies, illustrated that 45% of the overall percentage of languages in the European Parliament (EP) meetings was English. To accumulate more data of English use in diplomacy, this research investigated addresses made by the heads of state at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (GA). The EP is the law-making institution of the European Union (EN) (European Union, 2019), and the UN and the EU have contrasting language policies. Under the EU's non-restrictive language policy, national languages of all 23 members are included in the official languages (Finsen, 2016). On the other hand, the UN restricts the number of official languages to six, namely Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. This makes a difference in the payment for interpretation services. If representatives would like to speak in Portuguese, the EU provides interpretation. However, the UN does not. The speakers need to provide interpretation into one of the six official languages on their own. These contrasting language policies between the EU and the UN can influence language choice at the UN meetings. Moreover, the UN has a larger number of member states than the EU, and many of them belong to other language or regional organizations. Therefore, this study focuses on the prevalence of English use by the heads of state at the UN GA meetings according to five language and two regional groups.

This article reports on work on English in Scandinavian countries that is currently available in Danish, and in particular presents and analyses a recent book. This contains six papers given at a conference in Copenhagen in March 1998 on the influence of English on Danish, along with a newspaper article that had raised several of the language policy issues somewhat earlier. The book also contains the text of a policy document written for the Swedish government by the Swedish Language Council, ‘Proposal for a plan of action to promote the Swedish language’.

When considering dialectal variation in the UK, linguists have frequently considered the North/South divide and the linguistic markers separating the two regions (see for example Trudgill, 1999; Wells, 1986). But it has been noted that this is not a straightforward division (e.g. Beal, 2008; Goodey, Gold, Duffett & Spencer, 1971; Montgomery, 2007; Wales, 2002). There are clear stereotypes for the North and South – but how do areas like the East Midlands fit into the picture? The boundaries between North and South are defined in different ways. Beal's linguistic North does not include the East Midlands (Beal, 2008: 124–5), neither does Wales’ (2002: 48). Trudgill states that in traditional dialectology the East Midlands area falls under ‘Central’ dialects, which come under the ‘Southern’ branch, but in modern dialectology it falls in the ‘North’. Hughes, Trudgill & Watt (2005: 70) include a map which has the East Midlands in the North. Linguistically, the question has been raised whether there is a clear North/South boundary (see for example Upton (2012), where it is proposed that it is a transition zone). This paper revisits this question from the point of view of young people living in the East Midlands, to examine their sense of identity and whether this cultural divide is salient to them.

During the Soviet era, language teaching methodology in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was premised on promoting a deep knowledge of a language's grammar and vocabulary. To this end, the selection of texts was centrally mandated, and teaching techniques and activities were carefully controlled and monitored. This rigorous approach to language teaching had both benefits and drawbacks for teachers and students. In response to the drawbacks of traditional Soviet methodology, some teachers and teacher trainers in former Soviet republics are currently promoting communicative language teaching, also known as the communicative approach. Communicative language teaching, as opposed to more traditional Soviet teaching methodology, emphasizes learning to use language to communicate rather than learning language solely as a linguistic system. However, the implementation of communicative language teaching has been problematic, for reasons ranging from government policies to teachers' beliefs and training to students' expectations. The purpose of this article is twofold. We first describe important characteristics of traditional Soviet language teaching methodology and the consequences of that methodology for language learning. Then, we explore the challenges of transforming traditional language teaching methodology (for the teaching of English as a foreign language, in particular) in post-Soviet republics, using Azerbaijan as a specific example.

Native speakers of English are a minority; there are far more non-native speakers in the world (cf. Kachru 1997, Pennycook 2001). In addition, native speakers' standard or ‘correct’ English, in terms of its grammar and phonology, is not always useful or even appropriate in international contexts (cf. Gisborne 2000, Newbrook 1998, Shim 1999). However, despite global changes in the use of the language, the norms for ENL (English as a Native Language) remain dominant, most notably for the assessment of oral proficiency. Yet it is a major deficiency in the use of international oral tests that the proficiency of non-native speakers is measured against unrealistic and irrelevant standards (cf. Jenkins, 1996). The present paper focuses on the need to revisit the testing of English oral proficiency for non-native speakers, bearing in mind that English is used for world-wide communication and that being able to understand one another (cf. McKay, 2002) is the most important goal.

Nothing in the world is absolute. Everything is relative, cultural difference being no exception. Culture, as the total pattern of human behavior and its products, oversteps geographical limits and historical conditions in many ways, and it is characterized by its strong penetrativeness and fusibility. The advancement of the globalized economy and the rapidity and ease of modern communication, transportation and mass media have resulted in an ever-increasing exchange between cultures, unprecedented in scale, scope and speed. Consequently, an increase in universality and reduction in difference between cultures is an inevitable trend. It is no surprise to see phenomena characteristic of one culture existing considerably in another. As a result, some people even fear that the world will become a dull place when all the different nationalities behave exactly alike. The exploration of cultural difference conducted under the condition of tremendous exchange between cultures might be misled into the pitfall of generalization or absolutization. Nevertheless, the “cultural sediment” formed through long-range accumulation is not to be easily removed and the cultural tradition handed down from generation to generation shows great consistency and continuity.

English is becoming the default language of knowledge construction and dissemination (Kuteeva & McGrath, 2014; Zheng & Gao, 2016; Fuentes & Gómez Soler, 2018). However, English as a monolingual and mono-rhetorical means of disseminating knowledge may maximize its ‘Tyrannosaurus rex’ side (Tardy, 2004; Espinet et al., 2015; Zheng & Gao, 2016). The use of English as an Academic Lingua Franca (EALF) is depicted as hegemonic, totalitarian, colonial and imperialistic, silencing other academic traditions, imposing Anglophone ideologies of norms and rhetorical conventions, and controlling other academic territories (Phillipson, 1992; Bennett, 2013). It is claimed that an orientation towards the norms and rhetorical conventions of the Anglo-Saxon discourse demotes non-English languages, cultures and rhetorical conventions (Tardy, 2004; Espinet, Izquierdo & Garcia–Pujol, 2015), disadvantages non-native English-speaking scholars and their scholarship (Flowerdew, 2013; Zheng & Gao, 2016), erodes alternative forms of knowledge construction (Martín–Martín, 2005; Bennett, 2011), and reduces intellectual, cultural and epistemological diversity (Tardy, 2004; Bennett, 2011).

An examination of a distinctive intonation pattern in the English of Singapore

A consideration of the practical benefits to English-language lexicographers of the evidence derived from computer corpora (second article of three)

College English refers to a type of English course offered to non-English majors at tertiary level in mainland China. In recent years, however, College English has been criticised as ‘deaf and dumb English’ (Wu, 2004; Zhang, 2002) because of Chinese students’ perceived weaknesses in listening and speaking. As Zhang (2002), Director of the Department of Higher Education in the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE), explains, ‘Chinese university students can neither speak English nor understand it when they hear the language spoken’ (p. 4). To improve the situation, Zhang urges that ‘[w]hile reading has to be reduced properly, listening and speaking should be increased in College English textbooks’ (ibid.: 5). In other words, it is listening and speaking rather than reading that should be emphasised.

On keeping versus ‘correcting’ Dutch flavour in English texts. As early as 1992, Cox and Furlong indicated that some already considered English a national language in the Netherlands given how widely it was understood. Likewise, McArthur announced at a 1993 conference in Amsterdam, ‘English is now simply one of your languages, along with Dutch and Frisian.’ Against this backdrop and the increasing momentum of notions of World Englishes, it is no longer far-fetched to consider seriously the proposition of Dutch English emerging as a legitimate variety of the world's lingua franca. That such varieties have emerged in ESL or ‘outer circle’ countries such as India, Nigeria and Singapore is now well established. More controversial is the idea that so, too, could they emerge from traditionally EFL countries once relegated to Kachru's (1982) ‘norm-dependent’ expanding circle (such as the Netherlands and Scandinavia), which are now seen as transitioning – or indeed having already transitioned – to the ‘norm-developing’ realm of ESL.

Characterized by a politically censorious and highly regulated society, Singapore is widely considered to be one of the most sophisticated authoritarian systems in history (Lee, 2005). As in many other public and private domains, the government, well known for its paternalistic attitude (Schiffman, 2003), usually practices an active interventional policy on linguistic life, which is extensively explored in language planning and policy study. However, in a few areas where less official intervention is exercised, the linguistic reality has received relatively scant attention. This study sets out to examine to what extent grassroots individuals can use shop signs to express their personal inclinations regarding language use, which may partly demonstrate the virtual vitality of various languages in the multilingual society.

Punctuation marks like the comma and the question mark are fairly secure in ‘literate’ usage, but one cannot say the same for the apostrophe, whose curious and unstable history and present condition merit some thought.

This paper attempts to answer some questions that are likely to be useful in electing a norm for English at the syntactic level, such as how to distinguish between a norm and an error, where to start talking of indigenized English within a continuum, and whether the insistence on recurrence as yardstick is appropriate. I challenge the educated-usage criteria and assert that mainstream Cameroon English can only be elected in terms of the democratic and least-effort criterion. This criterion favours what I have called Community English, as against Institutional English.

On the analogy of racism and sexism, the term speciesism has been coined to highlight and protest against an exploitative relationship between humankind and the other living creatures of this planet.