Although Chinese Americans set up Chinese heritage language schools as early as 1848 to preserve the heritage language and to promote a sense of ethnic identity among their American-born children (Chao, 1997), there is strong evidence that language shift to English is taking place rather rapidly within the Chinese communities across the U.S. Data from the 2006 ACS show that while only 34.1 percent of first generation (i.e. foreign-born) Chinese Americans reported speaking ‘English very well’, the percentages rise dramatically for those who are American-born (i.e. second generation and beyond) or born overseas but arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 (i.e. the 1.5 generation). 70.4 percent of the 1.5 generation and 93.8 percent of the American-born Chinese Americans reported speaking ‘English very well’. Additionally, only about 27.6 percent of the ABCs were estimated to speak their heritage language at home. Taken together, these estimates suggest that the rate of shift from Chinese to English is accelerating. Jia (2008) finds that even for first generation Chinese Americans, their Chinese language skills continue to decline with increasing English immersion. Rapid language shift to English means that many ABCs speak English as one of their native languages, if not the only one. This raises interesting sociolinguistic questions concerning the characteristics of the English spoken by ABCs and how ABCs utilize varieties of English to construct and negotiate differences with respect to each other and vis-à-vis the larger social structure.

Learners of English from ‘Expanding Circle’ countries like South Korea find new opportunities of advancing their English. There is a considerable body of knowledge about the experiences of students who go abroad to continue to learn their language of choice in a natural setting where it is the dominant language. The current position of English as the most dominant international language results in a new phenomenon related to language learning abroad. It is reported that children, and sometimes families, travel abroad to countries where they believe they could improve their English proficiency. This phenomenon seems to be particularly true for learners of English in traditional Expanding Circle contexts, for example, South Korea, where the increase in the status of English is widely reported in academic.

WHY IS English a global language? Although the reasons are manifold – historical, geographical, economic, political, social, cultural – the key reason, it seems to me, is linguistic: its morphology is simple, many of its words are short and pithy, and among the key world languages it has the largest vocabulary. These features have helped it become the most widely used language in the world: a situation that makes Uncle French and Grandpa German envious. English has been open-minded since childhood. In the long process of exchange, English words lost most of their inflections and words of different origins were mixed together (Burchfield 1984:13). Unlike traditional German and French, English has been open to foreign penetration and never drives new words out. It is this openness that continually enriches the language. Chinese also likes to borrow from other languages. Old Chinese borrowed 35,000 words from Buddhism, and Modern Chinese has absorbed countless words from Western civilizations. This paper inquires into the mutual borrowing between English and Chinese, summarizes the techniques of borrowing words from English into Chinese, and asserts that semantic transliteration is the best approach to adopting foreign words.

Jesperson (1904:16–17) described phraseology as an ‘indispensable’ dimension of language competence, but in 1965 Chomsky banished idiomaticity to the fringes of linguistics, giving pride of place to syntax. It seems, however, that time has vindicated Jespersen's prioritizing of formulaic language. In recent years, the area of phraseology has evolved from its peripheral Chomskyan status to a fundamental role in language discussion, description, and acquisition that can be said to focus on ‘creative idiomaticity’.

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.

Morocco is a multilingual country where the official languages, as indicated in the constitution of 2011, are standard Arabic and Tamazight, while French is the nation's second language, pervading sectors of business, administration, diplomacy and higher education. English and Spanish are used as foreign languages in many contexts for different purposes and tasks (Ennaji, 2009). Unlike French and Spanish, whose presence in the Moroccan linguistic situation is due to colonial policy in the 20th century, English does not ‘have a colonial legacy in Morocco’ (Buckner, 2011: 213). With ‘strong demand for a lingua franca’ brought about by the media, economic incentives and globalization, the presence of English has consequently been furthered in Morocco ‘as a global language’ (Zouhir, 2013: 275).

Drawing on the linguistic practices of Facebook (FB) users in Mongolia, this article illustrates how multiple local meanings are produced in the local context of Mongolia, while English oriented linguistic resources are assimilated and injected into the local language – Mongolian. The research is timely in the context of contemporary Mongolia, as English continues to spread over and is used in more diverse ways than ever. Before 1990, Mongolia was a socialist nation, the satellite of the Soviet Union, with Russian language being the most important foreign language. English and other Western languages were uncommon, and Western cultural elements were largely resisted (Marsh, 2010). Following the collapse of Soviet Union, Mongolia embraced a new democratic society in 1990, transforming itself from a socialist to a democratic country with free market economy. Mongolia embraced the linguistic and cultural diversity, and English and other foreign languages have replaced the once popular Russian language. English has now immense role in both institutional and non-institutional contexts (Dovchin, 2016a, 2016b).

This article gives an appraisal of bilingualism in Afrikaans and English among the Cape ‘Coloured’ community and of shifting patterns within it. It has become customary to use quotation marks around the term Coloured and lower case to signal that this and other race-based terms are contested ones in South Africa (see Erasmus, 2001; Ruiters, 2009). On the advice of the ET editor for this issue, however, I will use the term with the capital and without quotation marks, since he argues – conversely – that the use of lower case and scare quotes in print can also be misconstrued as disrespect for a community. In this community it appears that a shift is underway from Afrikaans as first and as home language to English as the dominant family language. However, this shift does not follow a straightforward linear trajectory, and while some speakers appear to have abandoned Afrikaans in favour of English, in many families the language has not been jettisoned. Before citing studies that explore this complexity, including current work by the author, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the background to Afrikaans and English in South Africa and their place in the country's overall multilingualism.

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.

An appraisal of the promotion of a policy of official French/English bilingualism in operation since 1961

An examination of why people regard some words as inherently more beautiful than others

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.

A discussion of recent developments in the speech of millions in and around London and the lower Thames

Most recent research on teacher identity in the TESOL field has focused on how non-native English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs) view and position themselves vis-à-vis native English-speaking teachers (NESTs), and which factors influence their construction of their professional identities. However, the perceived native speaker/non-native speaker (NS–NNS) dichotomy greatly oversimplifies a complicated phenomenon by representing it as solely linguistic and disregarding sociocultural and political issues. Beyond the question of nativeness versus non-nativeness, race, ethnicity, nationality, and cultural identity have played key roles in how teachers position themselves within English language teaching (ELT). These other factors may be critical in how others judge the capability of a teacher of English and authenticity of his/her English.

A GREAT DEAL has been said and written about various approaches to the successful methodology for teaching English as a second language in China. Entire professional journals are devoted to the subject, such as Teaching English In China and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. But no matter how much is written, and no matter what teaching method is employed, the bottom line is that the average Chinese student learns to communicate orally in ‘Chinglish’: that is, in Mandarin sprinkled with English words and phrases or in English with a Mandarin-induced syntax.

Almost three decades have passed since Kachru (1985) proposed his three-circle model of World Englishes. Although this model is often challenged, few would deny its significance in opening the dialogue and raising awareness of issues related to World Englishes. The context of the project described in this paper is South Korea, one of what Kachru's model refers to as an ‘expanding circle country’. Reflecting on the idea of South Korea as an ‘expanding circle country’, this article briefly examines how Korea has expanded and continues to expand as a nation, juxtaposing it alongside the university speaking class I was teaching, as I look toward expanding both my own and my students' minds through exploring World Englishes within a university speaking course.

With a rapid increase of electronic communication and online social media, the English language has become a ubiquitous element in global communication. Although change is an inevitable phenomenon in any living language, an infiltration of a foreign language is often resisted by those who fear that a foreign influence would disintegrate the purity of their language, sabotaging its integrity and distinctiveness.

This paper attempts to show the important role that ideology (‘meaning in the service of power’) plays in the nurturing and proliferation of metaphors and metaphoric themes, a psychological and linguistic role that is just as important as bodily experience. It discusses such themes as power is high, sex is violence, disease is invasion, and race is colour, attempting to show how they drive social practices. It also explores how the themes activity is game and quality is quantity (along with such subthemes as time is money and human quality is wealth) have been implicated in the emergence of both capitalist economic philosophy and the Darwinism and neo-Darwinism which developed from it (as represented successively in Hobbes, Smith, Hume, Malthus and Darwin himself).

The study of meaning and changes in meaning has enjoyed varying levels of popularity within linguistics. There have been periods during which the exploration of meaning was of prime importance. For instance, in the late 19th century scholars considered the exploration of the etymology of words to be crucial in their quest to find the ‘true’ meaning of lexemes (Geeraerts, 2010; Malkiel, 1993). There have also been periods where semantic analysis was considered redundant to linguistic investigation (Hockett, 1954: 152). In the past 20–30 years semantics has enjoyed a period of revival. This has been mainly led by the advances in cognitive linguistics (and to some extent, historical linguistics) as well by the innovations associated with the development of electronic corpora and computational methods for extracting and tracing changes in the behaviour of the lexicon (cf. Geeraerts, 2010: 168ff, 261ff). However, there are still areas of linguistics which hardly involve lexis in their theoretical and epistemological considerations. One such area is sociolinguistics.