Indonesia is the second most linguistically diverse nation in the world. It has established its reputation as one of the largest markets of English language education. This paper examines the context of multilingualism in Indonesia in relation to the increasingly dominant role of English from my viewpoint as a researcher. I begin the paper by outlining how Indonesia is currently adapting to the role of English as a global language. I then discuss the position of English within the linguistic ecology of the country, highlighting how its promotion in the educational system adversely affects the maintenance of the indigenous and heritage languages. Finally, I point to the need for deliberate action in education that promotes multilingualism. I argue for a redirection in the Indonesian educational system towards multilingual education in order to ensure the preservation of the indigenous and heritage languages while adopting English as a Lingua Franca.

The concept of immigrant generation is complex. Americans use the ordinal designations first-, second-, third-, even ‘1.5’-generation to refer to individuals' varying relationship to their family's moment of immigration. But these terms are much more fluid in practice than the rigidity of the numbers implies, and the nature of that fluidity is changing over time. Furthermore, different waves of immigration mean different experiences of generation identity; a first-generation immigrant in the 1880s entered an American community that was drastically different than the one a first-generation immigrant enters today.

One example of these shifts in the meaning of immigrant generation is among Asian Americans across the country, particularly those in California. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between language and immigrant generation with respect to Chinese Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, the region of the United States with the longest history of Chinese immigration and settlement. We focus in particular on the pronunciation of English, drawing on data collected in the Bay Area from 2008–2009 to argue that Chinese cultural and linguistic practices are gaining currency in the wider community. Our discussion looks at the experiences of third and higher immigrant generations, especially as they interact with more recent waves of immigrants, and the resulting dominance of Chinese and other Asian identities across the Bay Area. The layered and rapidly shifting Chinese American experience suggests potential future directions for the study of other immigrant communities in the United States.

In this article, I describe the puzzle of idiomaticity in native and non-native uses of English: why are idioms so resistant to acquisition, even by advanced leaners and users of English? I identify the main cause of this problem in the “idiomatic paradox”, whereby the very reasons which make idiomaticity so natural and necessary in native-speaker discourse are precisely the reasons non-native speakers find them so elusive. I look at some of the implications of of the idiomatic paradox for language teaching and the use of English as a Lingua Franca.

An examination of a function of the second person pronoun frequently forgotten in pedagogical grammars of English.

A lawyer friend told me the following story about a court case in Hong Kong that he had taken part in. His client was in the witness box and was answering questions in Cantonese while an interpreter relayed his words in English to a judge who was not Chinese. At one point the opposing counsel put a point that was detrimental to the client's case and asked if he agreed with it. The translation of the reply was ‘you could say that’, which was understood by the court as indicating agreement. Of course, what he actually meant was ‘you (the counsel) could say that’ (i.e. ‘not me’), but it was understood as ‘you (people in general) could say that’ (i.e. ‘it is acceptable to say that’). In standard spoken English stress (as shown by the bold type above) and weak forms would normally disambiguate, but it seems the interpreter (a native speaker of Cantonese) gave each word equal stress, thus allowing for the unintended interpretation. I am pleased to report that this misunderstanding had no bearing on the outcome of the case, which was won by my friend's client.

A report on a survey of seven multinational companies in Germany. Since the 1990s, there has been a dramatic change in the structure of many large European companies. While previously many were ‘particularly solidly established in their countries of origin’ (Truchot 2002:14), they have now become multinational and are less identifiable with a particular country. A case in point is DaimlerChrysler, formed in 1998 through the merger of Daimler-Benz (a German manufacturer of motor vehicles) and the Chrysler Corporation (a US automobile manufacturer). A side effect of the rise of such corporations has been that English has become a key language of international business. This has certainly been true for DaimlerChysler, which has given English official status in the company

Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is increasingly becoming an important language in the country, judging from its use in the media (both private and public), in literary texts, the Bible and other religious materials. The soaring of writing in CPE has been hailed by many as a positive signal for the spread and survival of the language, but this begs the question of how it should be written. Formal statements made so far on how CPE should be written are divergent (see Todd, 1986; Mbangwana, 1983; Ayafor, 1996 and Schr¨der, 2003) and in practice the present situation of CPE writing is marred by inconsistency, where the English- and the phonetically-based options compete (see Schneider, 1960 and Awah, 1981). For a full-blown literature (which standardises a language in many respects) to flourish, there is need for an agreed writing system that can make its literature better accessible to the public. We need to know what makes the one option superior to the other and why. Showcasing the literature in CPE as guarantee of viability, as Ayafor (2005) does, is not helpful if we do not pause to ask ourselves how it is, and should be, written. The purpose of this paper is to assess the controversies involved in talking about and conceiving a writing system for CPE. It is also to propose a writing system for CPE, based on linguistic and extra-linguistic parameters.

Some perspectives from an English educator. Since the implementation of the policy of reform and opening up, and China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has been gaining strength quickly in the international, political, and economic arena. Globalization has led to China taking part in varous kinds of international cooperation and exchange. At the same time, globalization and the Internet have been providing a novel context in which to use English as an international language. Under such circumstances, the Chinese are using more English than ever before, and China English is being simultaneously localized and globalized. Like any other language, China English is a living entity or organism that is not only growing and progressing in the ‘Information Age’, but is also making a contribution that is enriching and developing world Englishes at large. Indeed, China English now plays a significant role in increasing international understanding and cooperation within the WTO and in the whole world.

The Elements of Style (henceforth, Elements) is a slender book of advice on usage and writing, revised by the admired novelist and essayist E. B. White from a book by his former English professor. White did well to accept Macmillan's suggestion that he should revise and expand his former professor's book for commercial republication: successive editions of the revision sold over ten million copies. Many college-educated Americans revere Elements, swear by it, carry it around with them. It was reissued in in April 2009 to a chorus of approval from famous American literary figures. One fan has published a whole book about its history (Garvey, 2009).

The title of Elements suggests a focus on style, but in fact much of it concerns grammar. The final chapter, ‘An Approach to Style’, opens by characterizing the earlier parts of the book as ‘concerned with what is correct, or acceptable, in the use of English’, and not with ‘style in its broader meaning’; and indeed, Elements is frequently cited as an authority on questions of grammar.

I believe the success of Elements to be one of the worst things to have happened to English language education in America in the past century. The book's style advice, largely vapid and obvious (‘Do not overwrite’; ‘Be clear’), may do little damage; but the numerous statements about grammatical correctness are actually harmful. They are riddled with inaccuracies, uninformed by evidence, and marred by bungled analysis. Elements is a dogmatic bookful of bad usage advice, and the people who rely on it have no idea how badly off-beam its grammatical claims are. In this essay I provide some illustrations, and a review of some of the book's most striking faults.

“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.

World Englishes (henceforth WEs) theory recognizes that English today is an international language that comprises ‘a unique cultural pluralism, and a linguistic heterogeneity and diversity’ (Kachru, 1985: 14). That is, WEs theory recognizes and appreciates an emerging group of English varieties worldwide (such as Australian English, Indian English, Singaporean English, etc.), seeing each as being of equal validity and legitimacy. This appreciation of the pluricentricity of English has aroused particular interest in the field of ESL/EFL teaching (e.g., Kachru, 1992; Jenkins, 2006; Kirkpatrick, 2008). It is well known that ESL/EFL teaching has long been dominated by the Inner Circle model (Kachru, 1985), also known as the native speaker (NS) model. The Inner Circle model of English teaching focuses on so-called ‘Standard English’ education and aims to develop ‘native-like proficiency’ among ESL/EFL learners. Such a monocentric approach posits the superiority of Anglo-American norms and cultures at the expense of other English varieties and cultures. However, criticisms of such an ‘exonormative native speaker model’ (Kirkpatrick, 2008: 184) have been frequently raised in the past decade, and a growing number of researchers (e.g., Kachru, 1986, 1992; Canagarajah, 1999; Jenkins, 2000, 2006; Seidlhofer, 2001; McKay, 2002; Kirkpatrick, 2006, 2008) have called for a paradigm shift to replace the monocentric Inner Circle model in ESL/EFL teaching. New models have also been proposed; for instance, Phillipson (1992a) argued for models in various specific English varieties that maintain international intelligibility; Kramsch (1998) proposed an intercultural speaker model, and Kirkpatrick (2008) advocated a lingua franca approach to replace the NS model; finally, Jenkins (2006) put forward the pluricentric approach to replace the monocentric approach in English teaching. Though different in some respects, these proposed new models all share the same aims for ESL/EFL teaching, that is, to promote pluralism in different cultures and English varieties, to raise ESL/EFL learners' awareness of the various English varieties, and to enhance ESL/EFL learners' confidence in their own English varieties. In this study, the term pluricentric approach is adopted because this term vividly catches the essence of the pluricentricity of English today.

Linguistic landscape (LL), a concept which first emerged in the field of language planning, refers to ‘[t]he language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings' (Landry & Bourhis, 1997: 25). There are two functions attached to the linguistic landscape of a given territory: an informational function and a symbolic function. The informational function serves to inform people of ‘the linguistic characteristics, territorial limits and language boundaries' of a specific region; whereas the symbolic function serves as an indicator of the status, power relations, and cultural identity of the inhabitants, affecting how individuals feel about their community (Landry & Bourhis, 1997).

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.

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.

Does an increasing awareness of the sheer international variety in the English language complex necessitate a new pedagogy for a new century?

THIS discussion of the condition of English teaching in Japan looks at some deeply rooted national educational and cultural attitudes, including in particular the impact of ‘the katakana effect’ on speaking and listening among teachers and students alike. A unique configuration of cultural, historical, sociological, and linguistic factors presents Japanese teachers with serious challenges. The Ministry of Education, faced with a rising dropout rate, cases of bullying, accusations against irresponsible teachers, and complaints from parents, agreed in 2000 to adopt reforms. The resulting curriculum and methodology changes necessarily address issues relating to English. Although the reforms aim to produce a generation able to thrive socially and professionally in the international community, entrenched beliefs and values threaten their implementation, particularly with regard to a more natural and creative way of teaching and learning Japan's international language of choice.

THE ENGLISH curriculum in China – including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) – has traditionally been dominated by native-speaker (NS) based pedagogical models. This is a source of many problems, ranging from learning outcome to teaching performance, and from cultural inappropriacy to speaker identity. Research in World Englishes (WE), in English as a lingua franca (ELF) and an international language (EIL), and to a lesser extent in second-language acquisition (SLA) has shown that a curriculum informed by a deficit model (by measuring learner performance using the yardstick of native-speaker-based standards) is by its very nature disempowering, and should be replaced with a model of difference, whereby learners' L1 identities and ownership of English are both respected.

Some innovative quotative usage among young people in London. In this article, Levey looks at its use in a south-eastern variety of English, specifically in narratives of personal experience by primary-school children in an outer London borough.

English plays an important role in the lives of Ugandans. For example, official government records are written in English, Parliament conducts its business in English, national newspapers are written in English. English is the medium of instruction from elementary to tertiary level. English is a lingua franca among people of different ethnic groups whose mother tongues are mutually unintelligible, especially if they cannot use Luganda or, to some extent, Swahili.

In ET6, Gillian Kay described how Japanese absorbs and re-shapes the words of English. There is, however, another trend in Japan, in which English is used as a social and commercial accessory.

An overview of language status in Cameroon which calls for the integration of Pidgin English into national life