Over the years, scholars in the field of world Englishes and other relevant areas of research and practice refer to ‘Chinese English’, assuming that it exists, by a number of different names, e.g., Chinese English, China English, Chinglish, New Chinglish, Chinese Pidgin English, and Chinese Englishes, to list just a few. There are underlying ideologies and perspectives to these names: e.g., whether Chinese English is conceptualized as a variety of English, an interlanguage, a lingua franca, or a constituent of a multilingual repertoire for intercultural communication involving Chinese speakers of English.

It is often observed that in modern English no political movement has created an internet jargon with the speed and range of the alt-right. Recently, however, we are seeing a specifically misogynist strand of this jargon shoot up, coming from the growing online anti-feminist network known as the Manosphere, and specifically its popularly best known outpost of ‘incels’. The neologisms being produced by incels have come to form a true cryptolect, developing at a rate that almost escapes linguistic description; at the same time, the elements of this cryptolect are quickly infiltrating broader popular culture and global vernacular contexts, from social media to Urban Dictionary (Ging, Lynn & Rosati, 2020).

Colloquial Singapore English (CSE, commonly known as Singlish) is a linguistic variety used in Singapore, a Southeast Asian nation home to three major ethnic groups: the Chinese (74.35% of the citizen and permanent resident population), the Malays (13.43%), and the Indians (9%) (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2019). It is one of the best known post-colonial varieties of English and has been documented since the emergence of the field of world Englishes (e.g., Greenbaum, 1988; Richards & Tay, 1977). Linguistically, the grammar and lexicon of CSE are systematically imported from other non-English languages used in the island nation (Leimgruber, 2011). From a creolist perspective, it can be viewed as an English-lexifier creole that contains influences from Sinitic languages such as Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as Malay, Tamil and other varieties in the Singapore language ecology (McWhorter, 2007; Platt, 1975). Several distinct features across various levels of language have been investigated in CSE, including phonetics (Starr & Balasubramaniam, 2019), morphosyntax (Bao, 2010; Bao & Wee, 1999), semantics (Hiramoto & Sato, 2012), and pragmatics (Hiramoto, 2012; Leimgruber, 2016; Lim, 2007).

‘Lesser-known varieties of English’ (Schreier, 2009; Schreier et al., 2010) have received increasing attention in the last decade. In particular, Englishes on islands with historical and political ties to the United Kingdom or the United States have been described, such as the varieties in Bermuda (Eberle, 2021), Samoa (Biewer, 2020), and Tristan da Cunha (Schreier, 2009). However, Madeira has hitherto received extraordinarily little attention, although it used to be home to a small but enormously influential group of British expatriates who controlled large parts of the economy and owned a considerable amount of land on the island. Even today, approximately 1,000 emigrants from the United Kingdom live permanently in Madeira, which constitutes the second largest group of foreign residents (DREM, 2020b: 11). ‘Madeira’ refers to both a Portuguese archipelago and this archipelago's main island located ca. 737 km west of Morocco's coast (see Figure 1). Overall, Madeira had a population of 267,785 in the last official census from 2011 and is a highly popular tourist destination, with roughly 8 million overnight stays by visitors in 2019 (DREM, 2020a).

The two African English-lexifier Creole languages Krio (Sierra Leone) and Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) are closely related. A close look at specific aspects of their grammar, however, shows divergence due to differing contact ecologies since their split in the 19th century. Krio has been spoken alongside its lexifier (the main lexicon-providing language) and superstrate (the socially dominant colonial language) English since its beginnings and Pichi alongside its superstrate Spanish for almost two centuries, but not alongside English. Resulting differences in contact outcomes transpire in the expression of tense, aspect, and mood, and the use of prepositions for the marking of participants. In these two areas, Krio has converged more with English than Pichi with Spanish because existing overlaps between Creole and lexifier forms have facilitated transfer from English. There is therefore evidence for different contact outcomes in Creoles depending on whether they continue to be in contact with a superstrate that is simultaneously the lexifier (in this case English), or not. No previous work has compared Krio and Pichi nor looked at these two Creole languages from the viewpoint of their differing linguistic ecologies and their resulting differentiation.

Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean Sea where English has the status of the most popular and important foreign language (Tsiplakou, 2009; Fotiou, 2015) and the majority of its inhabitants are literate in English. While a former British colony, it is generally absent from discussions of places where English has had some special relevance due to historical, political, social and economic reasons. For example, while other small countries with a history of British rule, such as Malta and Seychelles, are part of Crystal's (2003: 62–5) list of English speakers in territories where English has had special relevance, Cyprus is absent from that list. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by providing an overview of the use of English in various domains, i.e. workplace, education, linguistic landscape, the media, and communication between Greek Cypriots, along with a brief historical background. The latter aims to illustrate how Cyprus was different from many British colonies and how this has affected the status of this language in this setting both now and during the colonization period.

I first heard of the term ‘Chinglish’ when I was at Baiduizi (白堆子) Beijing Foreign Languages School in the 1970s, through Janet Adams’ book, From Chinglish to English. The book contained 60 short dialogues in simple American English. It was meant to be teaching us colloquial English, compared to, I suppose, the textbook English written by Chinese teachers. I found the term Chinglish rather odd, and it was an odd thing for us pupils at that particular school to be made aware of, because the school was, quite literally, the only school in China at the time where foreigners were directly teaching Chinese children foreign languages and cultures. Few of these foreign teachers had formal teaching qualifications, and they were not using any textbooks written by Chinese teachers, but in their own ways using material the school compiled specially for the pupils. It was a form of audio-lingual and direct method. The language we were taught was pretty colloquial and we did not, as far as I could tell, speak Chinglish that the examples in Adams’ book illustrated.

While World Englishes scholarship has always been concerned with different types of English varieties, Expanding Circle (i.e., non-postcolonial) Englishes have had a ‘late start’ in being added to its research remit. As a result, much important work in this area remains to be done. Expanding Circle Englishes in general and Asian Expanding Circle Englishes in particular are still neglected in many handbooks of World Englishes (e.g., in The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes; Schreier, Hundt & Schneider, 2020). Notable exceptions here are, for example, The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes (Kirkpatrick, 2020; including, among others, chapters on Japanese, Chinese, and Slavic Englishes) and The Handbook of Asian Englishes (Bolton, Botha & Kirkpatrick, 2020; including, among others, chapters on Taiwanese, Cambodian, and Indonesian Englishes). While traditionally much focus has been laid on matters of language policies, education, and attitudes, corpus linguistic approaches to Expanding Circle Englishes have become more and more relevant (see, e.g., Edwards, 2016 for the Netherlands; Rüdiger, 2019 for South Korea). In this article, we present the first results from a corpus-based study of Taiwanese English, drawing on the pilot version of a spoken Taiwanese English corpus.

Personal names are an important part of people's social identity, and they function socially as labels that both identify and distinguish an individual from others (Watzlawik et al., 2012). Cheang (2008) suggests that personal names can be a vehicle of self-presentation/self-promotion (cf. Goffman, 1980), not just a passive label, if the names are selected by the name bearers themselves. Although self-naming is also observed with a small minority of people who have changed their names given by their parents or close relations, the most common cases of self-presentation/self-promotion seem to be entertainers’ adopted stage names.

Bilingual code ambiguation (CA), also known as language play or punning, has been discussed for bilingual creativity as it requires English users to manipulate two languages in a single utterance (Moody & Matsumoto, 2003). Since Moody and Matsumoto (2003) suggested English–Japanese CA in the lyrics of Japanese popular (J-pop) music, some studies have paid attention to diverse aspects of bilingual creativity performed in this complex linguistic phenomenon (Luk, 2013; Rivlina, 2015; Scherling, 2016). They have reported non-native English users’ control over linguistic knowledge in phonological analogy (Moody & Matsumoto, 2003; Scherling, 2016), semantic relatedness and blending (Luk, 2013; Moody & Matsumoto, 2003), and socio-pragmatic functions (Luk, 2013; Rivlina, 2015). They have further suggested that CA needs to be viewed as bilinguals’ performative use of English and a local language to achieve symbolic goals (Moody & Matsumoto, 2003; Scherling, 2016).

In January 2021, Singapore's national performing arts center ‘Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay’, known especially for the high-quality acoustics of its concert hall, ran a special program called ‘All Things New’, featuring concerts and other art performances. It was advertised on location (see Figure 1), by a leaflet (Figure 2), and in a one-minute video (https://www.esplanade.com/festivals-and-series/all-things-new/2021) also shared on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U-7Yw9sTPs), and introduced young artists and bands who performed on the institution's ‘Concourse’ and its open stage called ‘Outdoor Theatre’ (for an example, see Figure 3).

In his short list of predictions for the future of English, written in 2006, David Graddol wrote that ‘Asia may determine the future of global English’ (2006: 15). India and China especially, he suggested, were likely to be the major influences on how the concept of English as a global language would develop. As Asian economies grew, so did their political status, potentially offering a different model for the global ecology of languages. Nearly two decades on, we are beginning to see notable shifts in the way English is perceived in different parts of the world. As a variety in an Expanding Circle country (Kachru, 1985), English in China has conventionally been seen as a foreign or international language, and the concept of an indigenized variety has received less discussion than it has in Outer Circle countries. But with shifts in geopolitics, the conventional rationales for naming practices around English in China may no longer be applicable. The discussion below is centred, therefore, around the issue of what might be a better term to capture the contemporary reality of English use, and attitudes to this use, in China; and on how an emergent variety, associated with the term China English, is becoming a more and more accepted part of linguistic culture in Chinese society.

Naming varieties of the Expanding Circle is a very controversial and much debatable issue (see Nelson & Proshina, 2020); therefore, it is a high-priority, pressing question, brought up for timely discussion by the English Today journal. Those who are negative or hesitant about the legitimacy of these varieties, prefer speaking about English in a country – for example, English in China. However, this naming proves to be deficient as it is ambiguous and, in a way, exclusive. Its ambiguity lies in the fact that this naming can embrace speakers of any variety, i.e., of all three Circles (see Kachru, 1985), who happen to be in China. On the other hand, it excludes those Chinese speakers of English who have left China, either as emigrants or temporarily, though they use English while abroad. This means that the descriptive phrase English in China lacks its terminological nature.

Economic globalization and the concomitant prominence of English as a global language (EGL) have had a considerable impact on educational policies and practices worldwide. The widespread belief in the economic benefits that individuals and societies can attain from greater English proficiency has created a global trend of early English language teaching (ELT) (Copland, Garton & Burns, 2014; Enever, Moon & Raman, 2009). In line with this global trend, Japan, as an economically advanced nation, has also gradually lowered the age at which English is introduced at school. Previous studies have explored the development of national ELT curricula, critically examining the discourses behind these official language-in-education policies (e.g., Kubota, 1998, 2002; Seargeant, 2009; Shiroza, 2020). However, obvious to the keen observer is that early ELT is often implemented more extensively and vigorously in Japan's rural communities than in urban areas, despite the latter's image of being only remotely affected by globalization.

In the past two decades, South Korean universities’ ‘top-down’ implementation of English-medium instruction (EMI) policy has been critiqued for inadequately addressing the linguistic challenges students and instructors face (Kim, 2017). Research suggests that rapid implementation of such policy is primarily motivated by the pursuit of internationalisation, where global ranking takes precedence over the appropriateness of the policy (D. W. Cho, 2012) resulting in issues of injustices (Williams & Stelma, 2022). As a result, of these injustices, taking EMI courses is not a popular choice amongst South Korean higher education students.

While the year 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered for the sudden and unexpected worldwide expansion of COVID–19, which has threatened humans globally, the year 2021 is being marked by news related to the fight, vaccination and immunization against the coronavirus. However, in both years some, comparatively secondary, developments took place which were also relevant at other areas of interest. This is the case with the events surrounding the British Royal Family, especially after the interview with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, by the renowned US journalist and TV presenter, Oprah Winfrey, on 7 March 2021. The interview took place following the couple's decision in 2020 to step down from their duties as senior members of the Royal Family. Both this decision and the interview, which contained uncomfortable allegations against the Royal Family, have had a clear and widespread impact on the media at different levels. Thus, the British tabloids have played a very important role in Harry and Meghan's story.