The present study focuses on the word cheeky which, in the past few decades, has taken on a new meaning of ‘mildly illicit’ in addition to, and partly overtaking, its original meaning of ‘impudent’. We examine how this semantic change is spreading in different age groups and in different parts of the English-speaking world. As we demonstrate, the newer meaning of cheeky is associated with younger speakers, so we examine whether this correlates with different age groups’ understanding of the new form. Furthermore, cheeky ‘impudent’ was used more frequently in the United Kingdom than in North America. If that earlier meaning was already marked for North America, how is the newer meaning cheeky ‘mildly illicit’ understood by speakers there?

Korea is probably one of the few countries, if not the only one, that observes a holiday in honor of the national language's alphabet. Hangulnal, which falls on October 9, is the Korean Alphabet Day. Each year, the government hosts events to celebrate one of the most prized possessions of the country, Hangul – the writing system of the national language. Created by King Sejong and his Royal Academy Scholars in the 15th century, Hangul is recognized as one of ‘the world's most scientific writing systems ever created by man’ (Sohn, 2001: 13). To outsiders, such pride may appear somewhat overblown, but Koreans do take great pride in Hangul.

Together, English and Spanish head the list of multinational languages. Inevitably they meet – in Puerto Rico, California, Florida and elsewhere – and the results are kinds of ‘Spanglish’ and englañol. Here we take a look at what has happened in South Texas.

Sociolinguistic research has established that glottal realisations of the voiceless alveolar stop /t/ have become increasingly common in accents of British English. The phenomenon, known as T-glottalling, encompasses the production of word-final and word-medial /t/ using glottal articulations, including creaky voice, pre-glottalisation [ʔt] and glottal replacement [ʔ] (Straw & Patrick, 2007), so that words such as but [bʌt] and butter [bʌtə] may become [bʌʔ] and [bʌʔə] respectively. The change has been documented for some time in Scotland (Macafee, 1997) and Norfolk (Trudgill, 1999) but has since been reported in numerous locations across the UK (see Smith & Holmes–Elliott, 2018 for a recent review). Studies of regional dialect levelling (Kerswill, 2003) have argued that T-glottalling has spread from working-class London speech into neighbouring varieties of South East England and beyond as a form of geographical diffusion (Altendorf & Watt, 2004). Together with other variables showing similar sociolinguistic patterns, such as TH-fronting and L vocalisation, it has been identified as part of a set of ‘youth norms’ used by young people in many urban centres to index a trendy, youthful identity (Williams & Kerswill, 1999; Milroy, 2007; though see Watson, 2006 for an exception in Liverpool), which have elsewhere been referred to as ‘Estuary English’ (Rosewarne, 1984; Altendorf, 2017). In terms of perception, T-glottalling is described as highly salient and stigmatised, frequently attracting comments from lay speakers to the effect that it should be avoided (Wells, 1982; Bennett, 2012), to the extent that mainstream journalistic publications can identify and criticise its use by ‘educated’ speakers such as politicians (e.g. Littlejohn, 2011).

Any news on English education in China today is now no news, but this most recent one may offer us some fresh food for thought.

Tom McArthur reflects on the life and indefatigable work of the English-language materials writer L.G. Alexander, who died on June 17th this year at the age of 70, after a long and patient struggle with leukemia.

Technologies are beginning to blend our experience of digital and physical realities. We exchange data (images, videos, messages, etc.), present ourselves to the rest of the world on social media, network, and even perform a larger number of tasks than in person. As our world and ways of life keep on changing, so do words. The aim of this article is to examine the coinage of blends (i.e. smog-type [<smoke + fog] words) as a response to the blended realities that have emerged from the use of new technologies.

Grammars, dictionaries, usage manuals and other linguistic references are traditionally categorized along a spectrum running from prescriptivist to descriptivist, yet for years problems with this system of categorization have been noted. Forty years ago Geoffrey Pullum cautioned against confusing methodology and motives when applying the ‘descriptive’ or ‘prescriptive’ labels (1974: 77–78). A few years later Emma Vorlat suggested a middle ground, that grammars codify the language along a continuum of prescriptive–normative–descriptive, that is codification based on arbitrary rules – usage by social elites – description without value judgment (1979: 129). Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade noted that Vorlat's categories are not discrete, with eighteenth-century grammars increasingly basing prescriptions on descriptions of actual usage as the century progressed (2000: 877). María Rodríguez-Gil further noted that prescriptive grammars often base their advice on description of the language of social elites (2003: 190). Joan Beal characterized Robert Lowth's eighteenth-century grammars as both ‘normative’ and ‘descriptive’ (2004: 106). And Robin Straaijer has noted that ‘it seems useful to view prescriptivism and descriptivism as being independent from one another rather than diametrical opposites’ (2009: 67–68). Yet, perhaps because of the baggage carried by the two terms, to date no one has made the leap to conclude that the two terms address entirely different domains altogether – Straaijer approached the brink but did not leap. Prescriptivism and descriptivism do not exist along the same continuum.

The Canary Islands are very well known as an all-year-round tourist resort, thanks to their mild climate. References to the Islands have been many and varied since ancient times. Caught between legends and reality, the Canaries were described as marvellous islands on the limits of the world. They were referred to as ‘the Isles of the Blest’, the Hesperides or the Elysian Fields by the Greek poets of the Golden Age.

Well, I have been called some things in my time, but never, never a ‘purist’! I have spent my life attacking language purists, and purists have spent their lives attacking me. So to see myself introduced thus at the end of Aysha Viswamohan's interesting paper on ‘Code-mixing with a difference’ (ET79: Jul 04) was quite a shock. ‘Many purists like David Crystal believe…’

Spelling variation is something that all English users often come across and Australians are no exception. The Langscape 1 survey conducted in 1998 examined a number of lexemes with more than one spelling in a number of varieties of English including Australian English (AusE). This study presents the results of two later surveys that were conducted online in 2005 and 2013 and included a selection of the lexemes also examined in the Langscape survey. The present study concentrates on two types of spelling variation: the spelling of the classical digraphs ae/oe as in aesthetic and diarrhoea and the preservation of e before suffixes as in likeable and judgement. The purpose is to see if the spelling of ‘the extra letter’ is preferred or whether the simpler spellings are becoming more common in Australian English. The possible American English (AmE) influence also comes into question as it has been shown by previous research that Americans are more likely to use the shorter spellings than either British English (BrE) or Australian English users (see, for example, Peters 1998 for the results of the first Langscape survey).

English control verbs take infinitival complements that include the particle to:

1. (1)

   1. a. She tried to read one book each week.

   2. b. She promised to read one book each week.

This paper identifies and describes five major varieties of Cameroon English (hereafter CamE) in Cameroon audio-visual materials. These five ‘audio-lects’ are Pidginized, Mainstream, Near-RP, Americanized and Frenchized CamE. The paper argues that these audio-lects mostly tie with real-life CamE, but differ from the latter phonostylistically. The utterances of 80 Cameroonian actors, actresses and musicians excerpted from 100 audio-visual materials constituted data for the paper. The audio-visual materials and artists were randomly selected to represent, as much as possible, CamE speakers from different socio-cultural spheres within Cameroon. The findings indicate that these audio-lects largely resemble real-life CamE varieties, which reflect the socio-ethnic, academic and professional diversity of CamE speakers.

There are two main ways to communicate messages linguistically: verbally and non-verbally. In verbal communication, the message is transmitted by means of such devices as stress, intonation and pausing. An example of stress is the word object which has differentmeanings when stresseddifferently, as in obˈject and ˈobject. The first is a verb which means ‘disagree’. The second is a noun which means ‘material thing’. An example of intonation is the expression What a beautiful day! which expresses different feelings when said with different intonations. With a fallingintonation, it is said perfunctorily. With a fall-riseintonation, it is said enthusiastically. With a rise-fall intonation, it is said sarcastically. An example of pausing is the expression Don't eat that honey. When the pause is after that, that refers to an object and honey refers to a person, meaning ‘darling’. When the pause is after honey, honey refers to an object. So, the listener is ordered not to eat the honey. These devices are extensively covered in Roach (2009), Carr (2012), Odden (2014) and Kennedy (2016), among others.

In November 1974 a murder took place which, both at the time and in retrospect, provided British journalists with material for countless articles. Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (generally referred to as ‘Lord Lucan’) apparently killed his children's nanny with a blunt instrument, attacked his wife, and then fled his Belgravia home. His whereabouts since then, and even (despite the fact that he was declared dead in the High Court in 1999) the question of whether or not he is still alive, continue to be a matter of sporadic discussion in the media and among the general public. As British National Corpus (BNC) evidence shows, Lord Lucan is now sometimes lumped together in the conversation and writings of the British with other creatures and objects whose existence is the stuff of legend rather than of scientific certainty:

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.