Culture is an inseparable part of English Language Teaching (ELT), and ELT textbooks, as one of the main instructional resources are bound to include cultural and linguistic content. However, the kind of cultural content in these books has been a controversial issue for decades. It is recommended that curriculum designers use intercultural…

Anchored on Labov's notion that some linguistic features may exhibit variants among speakers of the same language within the same community as well as on Parker and Riley's language variation theory, this inquiry which employs a qualitative-content [manifest] analysis assumes that "Surigaonon" exhibits some linguistic variations hence…

The aim of this personal reflection is to revisit the major concepts that have informed my academic research in the area of applied linguistics and second language development, and show how my overall pedagogical approach has evolved, thanks to the contribution of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (SCT). The main focus of this paper is on the…

In pedagogical debates about Global Englishes (GE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF), there is widespread agreement concerning an urgent need for liberating teachers and students from the normative constraints of ELT's orientation towards standard English by raising their awareness of the characteristics and complexities of GE/ELF…

This paper draws draw on conceptualisations of language as heteroglossic to examine whether and how multilingual practices and plurilingual pedagogies are enacted as instructional strategies in two multilingual English-medium universities in western Canada. Multilingual educational contexts have the potential to comprise 'translanguaging spaces'…

Appropriacy is the paramount consideration of such an inherently polite speech act as thanking in its use. Traditional study of thanking focuses more on the quantitative investigation of its diverse forms and functions than on interpretation of the process in which it is used appropriately and adequately or not among English native or nonnative…

In this paper, I draw on interview data to explore parents' constructions of language and identity in two London Turkish complementary schools. I examine parents' evaluative talk about standard Turkish, Cypriot-Turkish and other regional varieties of Turkish, the cultural values they attach to them and images of personhood these invoke. I…

A study was undertaken to demonstrate that expository prose written in Indian English exhibits certain characteristics determined by the sociocultural conventions of writing in the Indian tradition. These features of Indian English texts are often judged to be inappropriate by native speakers of North American and British English, and mistakenly…

This collection of articles on intercultural communication and pragmatics includes: "Peut-on traduire la publicite? L'exemple des annonces romandes et alemaniques" ("Does Advertising Translate? The Example of Romansch and German Ads") (Marc Bonhomme, Michael Rinn); "La construction de l'image de l'autre dans l'interaction.…

The current state of research on cross-cultural speech acts is examined, its applicability to the second language classroom is evaluated, and new directions for research, with more relevance for classroom practice, are recommended. Problems found with cross-cultural speech act research to date include questions it has raised about the universal…

A study applied Relevance Theory to interpretation of texts written in Ghanaian English, particularly those intended for reading by multiple audiences. The nature of such "hybrid" texts is examined and key principles of Relevance Theory are outlined. Relevance is defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort. Contextual…

A cross-cultural study of conversational politeness in Chinese and English as a foreign language is presented. The primary goals of the study were to make a systematic comparison of politeness rules and conversational strategies used in each language, to identify and analyze the actual communicative problems of cross-cultural communication…

A study comparing the request strategies of native and non-native speakers of English and Spanish is reported. Subjects were 29 American and 78 European students with varied first languages, enrolled in English and Spanish courses at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). Data were obtained using a general background questionnaire and a…

The text presents an introduction to sociolinguistics for second language teachers, focusing on social dimensions of language likely to be of interest to this group. The first group of chapters addresses the manner in which the larger social and political context affects language broadly: "Language Attitudes, Motivation, and Standards" (Mary…

The study of native language influence in Second Language Acquisition has undergone significant changes over the past few decades. This book, which includes 12 chapters by distinguished researchers in the field of second language acquisition, traces the conceptual history of language transfer from its early role within a Contrastive Analysis…