The evolution of World Englishes has widely affected and transformed the lives of many people in many countries; it is thus a process of great cultural and political significance. This chapter surveys some social debates and issues which have arisen in this context and attitudes towards new varieties of English, outlining sociocultural contexts and considerations affecting the emergence and acquisition of World Englishes. Topics include the association of English with "elitism", accessible mainly through higher education and thus a class divider, as opposed to its "grassroots growth"; the claim that it is a "killer language" reducing global linguistic diversity; norm orientations (towards a supposed "international English", "English as a Lingua Franca", or endonormative models); the role of new dialects of expressing local identities; the problematic status of the notion of a "native speaker"; the spread of mixed language forms; and pedagogical consequences resulting from all these issues.

This chapter explores the expert–novice construct through an investigation of classroom discourse focusing on four international graduate students in an MA program in TESOL at a US university. It examines the contingent and shifting nature of expert–novice in two teaching methods courses, which were situated at a nexus of multiple communities of practice: the classrooms, the program, graduate school, the TESOL profession, etc. Microanalysis of classroom interactions reveals how instructors ascribed knowledge to students and positioned them along a continuum of expertise, and considers how focal students’ identities as nonnative speakers of English shaped this positioning. Classroom practices are juxtaposed against focal students’ self-representations as displayed in interviews and classroom behavior as they validated, resisted, or negotiated their positioning. The chapter reflects on the impact of these expert–novice identifications on focal students’ socialization as well as implications of a more dynamic and fluid conceptualization of expert–novice for the study of academic discourse socialization.

This chapter explores ideas about ‘(non-)native’ speakers of English, with particular reference to the professional context of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). The use of ‘(non-)native’ speaker to describe a person’s use of English remains common in a variety of domains, despite much scholarly and professional argument against the term. Given that learners and teachers comprise the educational context of this chapter, I have chosen to focus on the native and non-native speakers themselves, rather than on their (so-called) native and non-native uses of English. In doing so, I hope not to fall into the trap of thinking of people as permanent members of closed categories, but, on the contrary, show how we might raise awareness of the (potentially negative) effects of such thinking on speakers of English, in the TESOL profession.

This chapter aims to engage with wider discussions in this volume regarding ontologies of English and how language can be productively conceptualized by English teachers, learners/users, and other stakeholders. As indicated by the title, the work is intended to make a specific contribution towards uncovering complexity in ontologies of language that do not map cleanly onto dichotomies such as ‘monolithic versus plurilithic’ (Hall, 2013), ‘difference versus deficit’, or ‘standards-based versus intelligibility-based’. As also indicated, these ontological discussions are framed by a study carried out in a lingua franca context of pedagogy and usage, where (1) Japanese voluntary workers use English as a Lingua Franca to communicate with local interlocutors in diverse global locations and (2) an English language course is taken by these volunteers prior to their departure from Japan that is specifically designed to facilitate that communication. Further details on this context are provided in the following section before the focus returns to conceptions of English.