The text of a lecture delivered at the JALT (Japanese Association of Language Teachers) Conference in 1988.

The text of a speech given in April 1989 at the celebration marking the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Noah Webster, at Noah Webster House, Hartford, Connecticut.

The text of the 6th Annual Collins Dictionary Strathclyde Lecture given by Profesor Cox at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, 9th May 1989.

• Like this year's hemline, we may all simply have to endure ‘postmodernism’ until the next season. So perhaps we should face facts and start taking a few notes, to be casually dropped at our next garden party. Language, they tell us, and particularly literary language, doesn't describe the world, but only the meaningless machinery of language itself. Character and story are cultural restraints to the ‘free play’ of self and identity, and as such should be subverted. Authors shouldn't write novels any more, but rather ‘deconstruct the Western metaphysic’… Like many post-moderns, Paul Auster has a theory about the world, but, unfortunately, nothing to go with it. In his new novel, In the Country of Last Things, the narrator who travels across Auster's fragmented, entropic landscape never discovers her lost brother, but only other lost people, vast quantities of dead and disused objects. It is a world in which language neither works nor matters; it simply lies brokenly about (Scott Bradfield, ‘Thoroughly Postmodern’, The Listener, 28 Jul 88).

The evolution of the syllabus in teaching English as a foreign language.

A review of the development and nature of Pakistani English.

Two seasoned Australian lexicographers sit down to a session of stubbies, grog, cheque-men and jamberoos.

A consideration of thingummies, doohickeys and other vague words.

GEOFFREY KINGSCOTT, editor of ‘Language International: The magazine for the language professions’, in his editorial of September/October 1989 expressed his concern about the spread of ‘Foreigners' English’ in recent years. We reproduce his comments here and both he and ET would be glad to have readers' views on this matter.