Reporting on a new research project describing and analysing English in Finland in the early twenty-first century.

In a recent article, Taavitsainen and Pahta (2008) conclude that English in today's Finland has entered a new phase in which it is increasingly used alongside the country's national languages (also McArthur, 2002; Graddol, 2006). The new uses, they suggest, constitute a new form of second language in which English is used (a) as a lingua franca, and (b) as a language serving ‘glocalized’ needs to express local meanings in a global setting. Their evidence consists of various forms of language mixing in public discourse. Other forms of evidence, with similar conclusions, come from the recent national survey on Finns' uses of and attitudes to English, carried out at the University of Jyväskylä in 2007 (Leppänen et al. 2009). This survey provides evidence on the changing role of English in Finland, and attempts to answer questions such as where, how and by whom English is used alongside the other languages in the country.

Within American sociolinguistics there is a substantial body of research on race as a social variable that conditions language behavior, particularly with regard to black speakers of African American English (AAE) in contact with their white neighbors (e.g., Wolfram, 1971; Rickford, 1985; Myhill, 1986; Bailey, 2001; Cukor-Avila, 2001). Today, the communities that sociolinguists study are more multi-layered than ever, particularly in a metropolis like New York City, thus warranting more complex analyses of the interaction between race and language. Along these lines, Spears (1988) notes the sorely underestimated social and linguistic heterogeneity of the black population in the U.S., which needs to be considered in studies of the language of black speakers. This critique is addressed in work of Winer and Jack (1997), as well as Nero (2001), for example, on the use of Caribbean English in New York City. These two studies broaden our notions of the Englishes spoken in the United States by black people, particularly first generation immigrants. The current research goes one step further with an examination of the English spoken by children of black immigrants to New York City.

We focus on second generation Caribbean populations whose parents migrated from the English-speaking Caribbean to the United States, and who commonly refer to themselves as West Indians.

“Dictionary of Modern English Usage, short forms Modern English Usage, MEU. The best-known usage manual of the 20C, compiled by H. W. Fowler and published by Oxford University Press in 1926 […]. This work in particular has made the name Fowler as well known among those interested in usage and the language as Johnson and Webster, a point of reference for both those who venerate and those who regret what he has had to say.” (Burchfield, 1992a: 311)

If the quotation above is anything to go by, it tells us two things, namely that Fowler's Modern English Usage [MEU] is regarded as the best-known usage manual of the 20th century and that opinions about Fowler are highly controversial. Works like the Fowler Brothers' (1906) The King's English [KE] and Henry W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) [MEU-1] can be regarded as role models for usage handbooks in Britain. The immense success and popularity, especially of the latter work, with new editions in 1965 (revised by Sir Ernest Gowers) [MEU-2] and in 1996 (further revised by Robert Burchfield) [MEU-3], calls for an explanation. In order to reveal the relationship between authority and success, the present article places MEU and its predecessor KE in their socio-historical contexts and then gives a detailed account of the success story of MEU. It analyses the book's reception in its three editions and its treatment in English-language histories and introductory textbooks to the English language.

The English language has fast become a global language. In Asia, from the far steppes of Mongolia to the beaches of Thailand, to the shores of the Caspian Sea, English print, music, and along with language, Western values, have spread and multiplied. New technology and media, especially the Internet (Crystal, 1996/2003), have helped carry English to people of all nationalities and economic classes. But many scholars feel that the rise of English is connected with the downfall of indigenous languages (Fishman, 1996; Crawford, 1996; McCarty, 2003). Minority languages face extinction as English rides the wave of increasing globalization (Romaine, 2001). Since 2007, Newsweek, The China Daily, and other international media sources have been citing English as the language of economic success in China. Adherents of English claim that it brings positive social change, economic opportunities, consumer goods, and new technologies (Castells, 2001). Such materialistic temptations cause some minority youth to discount the value of their languages and traditions. In Native America, for example, a small minority of Native Americans youth may feel that exchanging, dismissing, or even abandoning their native language and culture for English and a Western lifestyle represents progress and success in the form of material goods and a modern lifestyle (Crawford, 1996; McCarty, 2003). Similarly, in China, English is viewed as the language of economic success by many young Chinese. Opponents of the rise of English view the language, and its underlying cultural messages, as imperialistic. Phillipson (1992) accuses ESL educators of making a negative cultural impact upon unsuspecting indigenous peoples all over the world. Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) asserts that English can be used as a tool by Western nations for global dominance.

The growing demand for English in parts of Cameroon that were once firmly under French influence.

In the last decade, multilingual Cameroon has awoken to a new linguistic reality characterised by reconstructing linguistic identities in order to fit in the global space. This is seen in more and more urban Francophones pursuing English medium education and the Anglophones consolidating their identity alignment to the English language. From a sociolinguistic perspective, this paper evaluates the prominence and implications and prospects of this rush for English education in contemporary urban Cameroon. The case study method and cost-benefit analysis confirm that there is a fast growing interest in English medium education and the beginnings of English as an L1 in urban Cameroon. The result is a paradoxical sociolinguistic outcome: first of all, there is a shift by the majority Francophone group, who are shifting from a predominantly French medium to an English medium education, principally for economic benefits. Secondly, the Anglophones are increasingly shifting to English as an L1, without losing French as they live in basically French-speaking urban zones. This state of language shift implies that there will subsequently be bilingualism without diglossia in Cameroon's two official languages, and loss of the long-standing French language hegemony in Cameroon. At the same time, this shift threatens Cameroon's ancestral languages, forcing them increasingly into attrition and possibly endangerment.

Demographic data indicate that the English of Mexican Americans is destined to play a key role in the sociolinguistic study of language variation in the United States. In fact, Mexican American speakers are reported to account for more than 12.5% of the U.S. population. In 2003, the U.S. Census released data showing that Latinos and Latinas had replaced African Americans as the largest minority ethnic group in the U.S., and by 2007, 29.2 million Americans listed their ancestry as Mexican (Pew Hispanic Center, 2009). Moreover, in addition to the large numbers of Mexicans (first generation) and Mexican Americans (second generation) living in the Southwest, we are now seeing a new representation of these ethnic groups in other areas, such as the South. For example, between 1990 and 2000, North Carolina experienced a higher percentage of growth in its Mexican American population than any other state (Wolfram, Carter & Moriello, 2004).

These statistics are important with respect to language because they reveal that a large and increasing population of English speakers in the U.S. are Latinos and Latinas of Mexican origin. Our notion of American English, then, must be extended to include the variety traditionally spoken by the children of Mexican immigrants in the U.S., generally referred to in the literature as Chicano English. In addition, if we look at the Mexican American population as a whole, we will find a number of other varieties of English spoken.

The term ‘idiom’ can refer to two types of fixed expressions. First, in a narrow sense, idioms are ‘expressions whose idiomaticity is semantic; typical expressions are kick the bucket, spill the beans etc. Second, idiomaticity is a formal property of expressions and is more or less equated with the fixedness of form; for example, by and large’ (Stathi, 2006: 27). It is more common, as Moon (1997: 46) says, for idioms to refer to ‘multi-word items which are not the sum of their parts: they have holistic meanings which cannot be retrieved from the individual meanings of the component words.’ Idioms are thought to be ‘relatively frozen and to have severe grammatical restriction’ (Moon, 1997: 47), and so it might be generally taken that they do not permit any lexical or syntactic modification, but they have greater possibilities of modification than might be expected. There are many idioms with different structures in the English language; I have chosen the idioms with the syntactic structure V + the + N. In this paper I will try to show the degrees of modification, the possible reasons for their modifications and the significance of the definite article by using the British National Corpus (BNC) and Webcorp, a web concordancer.

By the time you read this article we in Great Britain will probably have been through the process (or should that be charade?) of a general election when we will all be expected to choose who will represent (or misrepresent) us in Parliament. Any day now politicians will start running around kissing babies and turning up on our doorsteps asking for our support. Currying favour with the electorate they will even offer to take the old and infirm to the polling stations in the hope that such beneficence will encourage their charges to cast their votes for them. And of course they will attempt to persuade us that their party is the only one with the policies necessary to get us out of the economic mire we find ourselves in, omitting to say that politicians helped put us there in the first place. O tempora, o mores!

For the origins of the terminology we use in politics we must turn, as is so often the case, to ancient Greek and Latin for the answers to our questions.

“Some shops use an apostrophe, wrongly, to indicate an plural (‘pea's’), but will generally omit the apostrophe when one is actually required (‘new seasons asparagus’), a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the greengrocer's (or grocer's) apostrophe. Try to avoid this.” (Marsh & Hodsdon (eds), 2008: 5)

In this article, I shall examine a range of evidence from printed and web-based sources to gauge the extent of interest in punctuation, and the kinds of discourse employed in discussion of these matters. I shall also compare this with the comparative lack of attention paid to punctuation by 18th-century ‘prescriptivists’. I shall also consider why prescriptivism has returned with such a vengeance in the 21st century, and why punctuation is a focus of attention.

A transition from Arabic to English as a lingua franca. The developing economies of the Gulf states have relied heavily on expatriate labor at all levels to support the spectacular development which has taken place over the last 50 years; so much so, that in most of the Emirates expatriates outnumber locals. Nowhere is this more true than in the UAE, and in Dubai in particular. This situation has had fundamental socio-linguistic implications, one of which is the emergence of English as a lingua franca at all levels of the society. As is the case in Singapore, where English has replaced Malay as the lingua franca over the last 50 years, English in Dubai is replacing Arabic. This paper discusses this situation in general and looks in particular at the language needs and attitudes towards English amongst government employees in the police force. It uses data collected as part of a needs analysis survey which was conducted to determine the learners' needs, expectations, aspirations, and feelings towards English language learning which can illuminate its role as a lingua franca in the UAE. The data was collected from regular commissioned and non-commissioned police officers and cadets enrolled in courses in Dubai Police Academy as well as on-duty police officers from various police departments, divisions, and sections in Dubai. The data is discussed in relation to wider socio-linguistic issues within the UAE.

In this essay, I examine language use among Puerto Ricans in the U.S., and evaluate evidence that suggests that they are shifting to English more quickly than other Latino groups. This accelerated adoption of English might seem to be a positive trend to proponents of English-only or to those who fetishize assimilation as the route to success in the U.S.; however, the fact that it is very often accompanied by a loss of Spanish is troubling to those who value multiculturalism and bilingualism. The idea that Puerto Ricans are the group that takes the lead in the loss of bilingualism among Latinos is a source of debate for observers of the sociolinguistic reality of Latinos in the U.S.

With a particular focus on the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, I first discuss language loss among Latino populations in the U.S. Then, I offer a brief overview of Puerto Rican immigration history, and of Latino presence in Chicago. Lastly, I address the allegedly exceptionally rapid shift of Puerto Ricans to English, and discuss possible reasons for this phenomenon. I conclude that even though there are sites where this assertion seems to be true, we need more evidence that captures actual language use patterns across a range of contexts before we can arrive at a definitive characterization of Puerto Rican speech practices.

Despite a large and growing literature on Hong Kong English (HKE), few studies have been conducted on its emerging language features, particularly its grammar or vocabulary. According to Gisborne (2009), studies on HKE to date have focused on language attitudes, code-switching, learner errors, and the local accent. A quick review of the research on vocabulary reveals that even those studies with a specific lexical focus have tended to be fairly limited in scope, focusing on borrowing, politicized expressions and localized vocabulary. Additionally, by their nature, these studies have tended to only cover vocabulary items that are unique and obviously have a different meaning in the local setting. In particular, there is a noticeable dearth of in-depth studies on semantic shift, in particular extensions or adaptations of meaning for simple words or phrases which are taken for granted as being at the common core of English varieties throughout the world. This kind of usage is more likely to cause comprehension difficulties than the more-often studied borrowings or coinages, simply because it might not be apparent to either a native speaker or a Hong Kong speaker that there is a difference in meaning when it comes to the Hong Kong terms used, and therefore there is a greater potential for misunderstanding.

Why Australia still needs to learn Asian languages. Language learning in Australia has at times been a much debated and somewhat controversial topic. A new episode in this debate began recently with the publication of a report entitled Building an Asia-Literate Australia: An Australian Strategy for Asian Language Proficiency, which argues for a significant expansion and intensification of the learning of Asian languages and cultures at all levels of education. Much of the reaction to this report has focused on the role of English as the global language and its implications for language education. The main argument made against the report's proposals can be summarised as the ‘English is the global language’ view, a position which claims that because English is the global language, there is no need for Australia to implement a large-scale Asian languages and cultures education programme. This paper aims to refute this argument. Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical work, it demonstrates that there is a double danger in the ‘English is the global language’ view as it both exaggerates the current number of speakers and extent of use of English in Asia, and misinterprets the likely outcomes of any further spread of English.

In a downtown Border City, Ontario coffee shop, I interviewed Carlo, an Italian-Canadian man in his late 50s. He explained that his children, who are in their 20s, do not demonstrate much productive use of Italian, but that they have maintained the language in that they understand their grandparents' Italian and can imitate their Italian-accented English. I refer to the linguistic phenomenon that Carlo mentions as Stylized Italian English (SIE), which is the primary focus of this paper.

This paper begins with a brief ethnographic and linguistic background of the community and participants. I then explore specific features of Stylized Italian English as it is used in multigenerational family interactions, showing that second and third generation family members use SIE to index Italianness. Finally, I discuss SIE within larger contexts of language shift and maintenance and language contact research.

Euphemisms have no doubt been used ever since the birth of languages, and surely constitute a linguistic universal. We are all aware of them and we all use them when it is desirable to avoid drawing attention to the less pleasant aspects of daily life such as the need to empty one's bladder or bowel. They are respectful in that they show concern for the feelings of our fellow human beings; the more delicate the social situation and the more unpleasant the subject matter we refer to, the more careful we must be in selecting a euphemism for the purpose. Perhaps the most painful fact to deal with socially is the death of someone known to the person we are addressing, and for this purpose the English language puts a copious word-hoard at our disposal.

The mysteries of exotic China arise not only from its voluntary isolation from the modern world during some of the most formative and progressive decades, but from an inability or unwillingness of the west to understand Chinese logic and thinking. The west views China with western eyes and judges China according to western standards. The west asks some seriously ignorant questions about China, such as: What is the culture of China? What do the people of China think? What do the people of China eat?

To fully comprehend the absurdity of these questions, simply invert them, as Chinese college students regularly do in their English classes that are taught by foreigners: How is the culture of America? How do the people of America think? How do the people of America eat? Each populace assumes that the other is a mono-culture. This thinking also carries over into the area of lingua franca. The west assumes that all Chinese people speak Mandarin or Cantonese and have a common written language. China actually teaches that one must learn ‘Standard British English’ or ‘Standard American English’ or ‘Standard International English.’ In addition to Mandarin and Cantonese, China has 55 minority languages and an uncounted number of localized dialects such as Shanghainese, Wuhanese, and many others. There are at least three written Chinese languages, not just one, for example, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and pinyin.

The author wonders whether English is becoming as universal as is often claimed? Demand for English and American language centers has increased around the world, and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is now administered regularly in many metropolises. To ensure that their students are competitive, economically affluent countries have invested lots of money in the latest audio-visual technology while also recruiting the most competent teachers of English as a second or foreign language. South Korea has stood out in contracting American and British teachers to provide interaction-with-native-speaker experience to its students via satellite while European countries have benefited greatly from student exchange programs that enable their students to improve their competence by immersion in native socio-economic ecologies. Equally noteworthy are financial and emotional sacrifices endured by many, chiefly Korean, families whose mothers/wives and school-age children live in Anglophone countries so that the children can develop native competence in English. The relevant parents assume that as the world-wide market value of English continues to rise, every young person anywhere will need it, at least as a lingua franca, and the more fluent ones will have a competitive edge over their peers. Pop culture will undoubtedly have contributed its share to this rise of its market value.