In this chapter, I outline the development of some of the most widely used models of standardization and consider the extent to which they are able to account for the complexities of the standardization process and its different manifestations in diverse linguistic, historical and sociocultural contexts. I begin by discussing some of the ‘classic’ texts by Haugen, Garvin, Kloss, Ferguson and Stewart. I trace the establishment of certain key notions, as well as the publication of important texts in the 1980s and 1990s, including those by Milroy and Milroy, Le Page, Joseph and Cooper. I then outline some of the emerging and important themes in the work on standardization since 2000 which have proved challenging for the classic models of standardization. These include the standardization of minority and non-European languages and the consideration of standardization ‘from below’. Other developments concern an increasing focus on the agents of standardization and research on destandarization and restandardization, both of which need to be accommodated in standardization models. I conclude by revisiting Haugen’s model of standardization, which continues to be used in many studies and descriptions of standardization, despite its well-known limitations. I evaluate how far it is still valid and propose some possible modifications.

Chapter 1 situates research genres in today’s rapidly changing technological and social contexts. The aim of the chapter is to set the scene in which research genres enact social actions, particularly through new media environments, andto focus on systems of genres of research that are evolving in response to the multiple accountabilities of scientific knowledge production, dissemination and consumption today. In reviewing some of the consequences of globalisation, this chapter briefly reviews the particular conditions that post-globalisation processes – for example, skilled migration and the boost in researchers’ mobility – have created in academic and research settings. The chapter also briefly describes the effects of such processes on researchers’ socioliterate activity at a time of unprecedented sociocultural and sociolinguistic diversity.

An outline of the methodology of the BBC Voices survey and description of the corresponding audio archive at the British Library; a guide to using the thesaurus, with examples of typical entries; biographical details of all participants and a list of abbreviations used.

Giftedness, genius, and exceptional ability have captured the imagination of philosophers, educators, scientists, and researchers across disciplines for centuries. This chapter charts the giftedness concept through time and across competing theoretical paradigms. Those in the “nature” camp assert that giftedness is fundamentally inborn, while those who prioritize experience or “nurture” point to concentrated effort and practice, along with external opportunities, drive, etc.

Fuzzy terminology, narrow empirical approaches, and the inability to directly observe the mind-brain mean that the etiology of giftedness remains a mystery, and a point of heated contention in some disciplines. The problematics and usefulness of this concept for second language acquisition and learning are introduced, along with the argument for a broader, contextualized, and personalized account of L2 native-likeness.

The Introduction sets the scene by reflecting back on an essay from 2003 in which Mary Louise Pratt, during her Presidency of the Modern Language Association, called for a “New Public Idea about Language.” Though an occasional essay, prompted by “today’s dramatic circumstances” (p. 112), the wisdom of Pratt’s simple proposals has held up sturdily over the ensuing two decades. Little about her depiction of a “linguistically unequipped” country has been revealed inaccurate. The endless War on Terror years, complicated by Trump and Brexit, have only deepened the importance of her, and kindred, interventions since the turn of the millennium. But, like the 2007 MLA Report “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,” Pratt’s 2003 essay was an intervention in a particular, now historical, moment. Twenty years is ample time to warrant new clarity and purpose around such a “new public idea” about multilingualism.

This chapter examines both the roots of sociopragmatics and current understandings of the field. It starts by positioning sociopragmaticswithin pragmatics, pointing out some particular difficulties with its conception. After consideration of whether J. L. Austin’s work could be said to be an early precursor, the foundations of sociopragmatics in the work of Geoffrey N. Leech and Jenny Thomas are reviewed, including the distinction they propose between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, a distinction, it is noted, that has gained traction in certain sub-fields of pragmatics (e.g. cross-cultural pragmatics). The penultimate section examines the role of context in definitions of sociopragmatics, arguing that meso-level contextual notions are key. Finally, a definition of sociopragmatics is proposed

This chapter establishes a theoretical and methodological foundation for the quantitative corpus linguistic study of writing development. First, it defines and discusses the central constructs of writing, writing proficiency, development, and quantitative corpus linguistics. Second, it sets out four assumptions on which, we argue, quantitative corpus approaches rest and discusses in detail both the strengths of these approaches and the methodological challenges they need to confront. Third, it gives a detailed discussion of specific methodological issues related to defining and measuring key variables of development and context and of establishing the status of particular measures of language use. Finally, the chapter reviews one particular quantitative corpus linguistic approach (multidimensional analysis) which raises important questions about quantitative corpus linguistic methodology as a whole.

The nature of the linguistic knowledge that ensues is the sine qua non of theoretical controversies surrounding corrective feedback. This chapter effectively brings that to light through an in-depth discussion of two polarized theoretical perspectives: the behaviorist and the innatist. The chapter provides a pathway to understanding the epistemological differences underlying the ebbs and flows of interest in corrective feedback that the field of applied linguistics has witnessed over the past five decades, arguing that heeding the eclectic insights from both perspectives would greatly benefit future research and practice.

Chapter 2 focuses on methodological concerns within sociophonetics.The chapter presents an overview of phonetic methods as they relate to sociophonetic inquiry and highlights key points of departure in the methodological approach to and analysis of sociophonetic data.It begins with a general overview of the key concepts and approaches from both phonetics and sociolinguistics, and also discusses some of the major methods by which sociophonetic research is undertaken. The investigation of two kinds of segmental features, vowels and sibilants, is emphasized in order to explicate many of the central methods.The chapter draws from some of the foundational sociolinguistic as well as more recent experimental studies to connect methodological approaches in phonetics to growing research interests in examining social factors.As well, the chapter delves into not just acoustic but also auditory approaches, looking at how research on speech processing is an increasingly important part of the sociophonetic landscape.As we end the chapter, we provide an overview of some of the methods used in recent sociophonetic work on speech perception.

We have tried to keep orthographic mistakes to a minimum by creating first a machine-scanned version of the whole text (in fact, the one used in the project SPEED, alias EDD Online 1.0) and then a double-typed version – typed by employees of a firm in China. The three versions were then automatically compared (by Hans-Werner Bartz of the University of Trier, later of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Darmstadt, Germany), with a protocol listing the deviant passages so that we could check these passages and correct the mistakes manually. Generally, the mistakes made by the machine were different in type from the mistakes of the human typists. But talking about their mistakes, one should mention that the Chinese typists seemed to have a specific sense of deciphering subtle differences in graphic signs (which is what Chinese spelling consists of), in my opinion, more than educated European typists would, whose minds would probably have read and typed texts based on some sensible (but possibly incorrect) interpretation of words. The EDD, of course, created specific problems of spelling semiotics: phonetic transcriptions (of a kind unknown today), with many special characters; pseudo-phonetic spellings (as were widely, but inconsistently common in nineteenth-century Britain); and, last but not least, problems caused by the wide use of abbreviations and the separation of words in line-, column- and page-breaks.

Here we present the revised Speech learning model (SLM-r), an individual differences model which aims to account for how phonetic systems reorganize over the life span in response to the phonetic input received during naturalistic second language (L2) learning. We first review research leading to the formulation of Speech Learning Model, or SLM (Flege, 1995), before presenting a synthesis of that model and then its revision. The SLM-r proposes that the mechanisms and processes needed for native language (L1) acquisition remain accessible for use in L2 learning, without change or exception, across the life span. By hypothesis, the formation or non-formation of new phonetic categories for L2 sounds will depend on the precision of L1 categories at the time L2 learning begins, the perceived phonetic dissimilarity of an L2 sound from the closest L1 sound, and the quantity and quality of L2 input that has been received. According to the SLM-r, the phonetic categories making up the L1 and L2 phonetic subsystems interact with one another dynamically and are updated whenever the statistical properties of the input distributions defining L1, L2, and composite L1-L2 categories (diaphones) change.

Argument-based validity has evolved in response to the needs of language testing researchers for a systematic approach to investigating validity of the language tests. Based on a collection of 51 recent books, articles, and research reports in language assessment, this chapter describes the fundamental characteristics of an argument-based approach to validity, which has been operationalized in various ways in language assessment. These characteristics demonstrate how argument-based validity operationalizes the ideals for validation presented by Messick (1989) and accepted by most language testers: that a validity argument should be unitary, but multifacted means for integrating a variety of evidence in an ongoing validation process. The chapter describes how validity arguments serve the multiple functions that language testers demand of their validation tools, and takes into account the concepts that are important in language testing. It distinguishes between two formulations of argument-based validity that appear in language testing to introduce the conventions used throughout the papers in the volume.

This paper investigates article use in learner corpora in order to (i) examine how both the native language and proficiency level influence the patterns of article use, misuse, and omission and (ii) examine whether patterns of the overuse of the with specific indefinites found in experimental studies are also present in learner corpora. To this end, 200 texts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus are examined: 100 texts from Spanish-speaking learners of English and 100 texts from Russian and Ukrainian-speaking learners of English. Each subcorpus has an even distribution between learners at CEFR B1 and B2 proficiency levels. The results confirm that the learners’ native language affects article use: speakers of Spanish, an article language, show an increase in correct article use with proficiency; in contrast, speakers of Russian, an article-less language, continue to make article errors. On the other hand, the particular patterns of article misuse found in prior experimental work are not found in learner corpora: while Russian-speaking learners do overuse the with indefinites in the corpora, this error type is not tied to specificity. This null finding could be due in part to the relatively low number of errors of the overuse in the learner corpus.

Formal introductions to language study focus on transcribed speech, initially involving a familiar language where words and sentences seem self-evident. Presented this way, language seems to reflect an "autonomous" mental system separate from speech, which can be studied through writing signs. The arguments used to support this approach were originally formulated by Saussure and relate to nineteenth-century views of a localized language faculty in the brain. These influential arguments bolstered the concept of a speech–language division to the point that, at the turn of the twentieth century, many analysts saw instrumental observations of speech as irrelevant. In reviewing these arguments, evidence is discussed showing that the speech–language division is neither physiologically grounded nor methodologically useful in explaining the nature of features and structures of spoken language. One illustration is a study by Lindblom that shows that properties of the hearing system can shape vowel systems. Another example is given in a chapter bearing on how properties of motor speech can shape symbolic signs.

The integration of theories and practices from transformative learning into language learning and language teacher education contributes to a “shaking of the foundations.” Discussing transformative learning, the author, Rebecca Oxford, explains the meaning, purpose, and processes of Jack Mezirow's cognitive-analytic approach and John Dirkx's emotional-integrative approach. Oxford indicates how she used these two approaches in her language teacher education courses. She also shows that these approaches, although seemingly opposite, are in fact linked through neurobiological research, psychological research, and dynamic systems theory.

The chapter introduces the shared workspace framework for dialogue and other cooperative joint activities.

This chapter explores the conceptualisation of interactional politeness and associated research. It investigates three interrelated questions: (1) who studies politeness; (2) what is ‘politeness’ and how is it related to culture; (3) what are the main data types in which the politeness–culture interface can be captured. The chapter first points out that along with pragmaticians – academics specialising in the study of language use – linguistic politeness has been studied across a diverse cluster of areas. Being aware of this diversity is important because in a pursuit of intercultural politeness we should not limit our research to pragmatics only. Following this discussion, the chapter overviews the key features of politeness, by arguing that (1) it is a relational phenomenon, which (2) follows (linguistic) patterns, (3) means different things, depending on who attempts to define (or interpret) it, and which (4) comes into existence partly in interaction, and partly by not engaging in interaction (e.g. a person may get criticised for not doing something in interaction). The chapter argues that in pragmatics insufficient work has been done to capture the politeness–culture interface. Finally, the chapter overviews the main data types in which politeness in intercultural encounters can be studied.

Most linguistic theories of language socialization from childhood to early adulthood are based on cross-sectional studies or case studies of individuals. The Frank Porter Graham (FPG) project radically breaks from this tradition by examining the longitudinal development of more than 70 African American children for the first 21 years of their lives. The result is an unprecedented, comprehensive study that offers insight into the trajectory of change from pre-school through post-secondary education for speakers of African American Language (AAL) and the primary factors that influence these changes during this vital stage in the lifespan.

This paper advocates the theory of 'Complex Dynamic Systems', developed in the sciences as a suitable framework for the understanding of the evolution of varieties and uses of English through time and space. After looking into earlier applications of this theory in linguistics, it surveys core properties of such systems and illustrates their relevance by applications to specific processes of change in the history of English. It then investigates processes of lexicosemantic diffusion and syntactic restructuring in World Englishes within this framework, trying to document its applicability.

This introductory chapter draws on two major perspectives on globalization, glocalization, and grobalization, to make sense of the global challenges faced by English language teaching (ELT) and English language teacher education (ELTE) professions and local responses in ten countries/jurisdictions in the Asian region discussed in this volume. It highlights the common critical issues which have emerged from these responses and discusses their implications for ELT and ELTE. In the concluding reflections, it identifies three issues that are central and particularly challenging to the work of English language teachers and teacher educators.