This study examines the use of English on signage in the areas surrounding two U.S. military bases in Japan, Yokosuka Navy Base and Yokota Air Base, highlighting the diverse functions of English that emerge through interactions between American residents and Japanese locals. In these areas, including streets that have become tourist destinations for Japanese visitors, various commercial establishments coexist, some offering authentic products and services for Americans, and others commodifying American culture for Japanese tourists. Within these public spaces, English signage, along with other semiotic resources, plays a central role in shaping a uniquely commodified environment infused with American culture. The study identifies two key features of English signage that distinguish these areas from other parts of Japan: (1) the prominence of informational English signage targeting Americans, such as monolingual English traffic signs and church signs, which reflects the dense American population; and (2) the symbolic use of English by Japanese shop owners, which do not signal modernity or globalization as English signage typically does elsewhere in Japan, but instead commodifies American culture to attract Japanese tourists. These uses of English on signage, alongside other semiotic materials, shape a unique visual and cultural landscape, underscoring the multifaceted roles of English in non‑English‑speaking countries like Japan, including both the ‘authentic’ use of English in communication with Americans and the ‘commodified authenticity’ conveyed through English employed by Japanese shop owners to appeal to Japanese audiences.

English–medium instruction (EMI) has become a highly contested topic in discussions on the language of instruction policies in the Global South, raising critical questions about whether it truly delivers on the promises made in policy rhetoric and public discourse. While EMI is often promoted as a pathway to social, educational, and economic success for all, its rapid expansion raises concerns about linguistic inequality, social stratification, and unequal educational access. Through a critical synthesis of recent EMI literature, this paper identifies some persistent misconceptions that underpin the promotion and expansion of EMI in the Global South. These include the presumed neutrality of English, the belief in its automatic pedagogical and economic benefits, and the assumption that EMI leads to equitable access and improved content learning. The paper highlights the ideological and material consequences of EMI, such as epistemic injustice, linguistic hierarchies and social reproduction. In doing so, it calls for a rethinking of EMI beyond instrumentalist and Anglocentric logics and urges the centering of linguistic diversity, multilingual pedagogies and critical policy orientations. The article concludes with implications for future EMI scholarship and practices, particularly in contexts marked by deep social, linguistic and educational inequalities.

Scholarship in World Englishes has been prolific over the past several decades, and today, English is accepted as the world’s ‘hypercentral’ language (de Swann 2002). Despite legitimizing varieties of English used in diverse parts of the world, however, the focus of most World Englishes scholarship has been on educated varieties of English, perpetuating the hegemony of the educated elite. Scholarship on varieties of English used by uneducated/less educated users has been neglected, even in contexts like India, where the number of less educated users of English far exceeds the educated. This paper studies the English used at the grassroots by multilingual Indians in urban India and Oman, a country with a large migrant labor population from India. This qualitative study analyses a small corpus of public and restaurant signs and WhatsApp messages produced by Indians at the grassroots levels in urban India and Oman, and focuses on categorizing the features employed to communicate (successfully). Features are categorized as orthographic, lexical, and grammatical. The study concludes with a discussion on the necessity of including English at the grassroots in World Englishes scholarship to capture the reality of the Englishes used around the world.

This study investigates the role of English in Bali’s tourism‑driven economy, focusing on investment in English learning among Balinese tour guides. It examines the intersection of economic, social, and cultural factors shaping language acquisition, comparing learners of English at the grassroots who rely on formal, informal, or mixed methods of acquisition. Using Darvin and Norton’s (2015) investment model, the study explores how ideology, identity, and capital influence English learning trajectories. Data were collected through questionnaires and semi‑structured interviews with six Balinese tour guides, representing diverse linguistic biographies and learning contexts. Findings reveal that despite systemic barriers, learners of English at the grassroots demonstrate resilience and adaptability by leveraging social and cultural capital. While some depend on informal interactions, others access formal education or combine both approaches to enhance their opportunities. The study underscores the vital role of English as a tool for economic and social mobility in Bali’s international tourism industry, while also investigating the investment elements that shape learners’ trajectories.

This paper analyses linguistic information regarding signage developed by Ugandan English speakers at the grassroots level, as a category of non-elite users of English. It specifically examines linguistic signs displayed at small‑scale informal businesses, focusing on the source of the signs and the language(s) used in terms of features and the justifications for the choice of the language(s). The results show three types of signs: those written in English (which are predominant), those that blend English and Acholi, and those written in Acholi. Where English is involved, the findings reveal that the choice was mainly based on attracting a wider readership and thus clientele, as well as the fact that English is the functional official language in Uganda. It was also observed that both standard and nonstandard English were used. The source of the signs was reported to be grassroots users of English but sometimes artists and/or acrolectal users of English were involved in writing/drawing the signs.

‘English at the grassroots’ refers to English used by non‑elite speakers from lower social strata, with diverse acquisition paths, proficiency levels and usage. These Englishes are often heterogeneous, shaped by informal contexts and professions. English linguistics has long examined English as a pluricentric language, focusing on its use across first language (L1), second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) contexts, often through corpora, which predominantly represent upper‑middle‑class speakers. However, English is used in socially stratified societies, and sociolinguistic research has explored how language use correlates with lower social classes, especially in L1 varieties and multilingual contexts. Despite the historical focus on elites in L2/FL English acquisition and use – often due to colonial education systems – English has also spread to lower social strata globally. Yet, access to English is said to often correlate with socio‑economic status (SES), especially where education is not universally accessible. Nevertheless, SES does not necessarily always predict that one cannot use some form of English for communicative purposes. Non‑educational spaces – such as churches, homes, and social networks – play a crucial role in English acquisition and use outside formal education. These ‘grassroots’ efforts reflect resourcefulness in overcoming systemic barriers, enabling individuals to use English as linguistic capital for mobility, communication, and opportunity, especially in outer circle countries lacking a common indigenous lingua franca.

Services related to paid domestic work in private households are an important global labor market for migrant women. The Philippines is one of the largest exporters of work-force for the international domestic work sector. In this context, the linguistic legacy of American colonization becomes a key factor: English is an official language of the Philippines alongside Filipino. In addition, several varieties of Philippine English are widespread. Against this backdrop, Filipino and Filipina workers are positioned as competent, Anglophone workers in low-wage sectors such as the global domestic work market. Based on these attributions, they are also commodified as workers who can easily learn other languages and who are versatile and compatible with all linguistic and cultural spaces – worldwide. This paper sheds light on the multilingual repertoires of Filipina domestic workers in the Spanish capital, Madrid. The study is grounded in the paradigms of critical ethnographic sociolinguistics, migration linguistics and multilingualism research. The underlying data are based on narratives of Filipinas who migrated to Spain between 1971 and 2017. The findings reveal complex tensions around English. On the one hand, English is often perceived as prestigious and therefore valuable linguistic capital that can lead to social mobility. On the other hand, English is not seen as a panacea for securing employment beyond domestic work. Extrapolating from these findings, the overall picture that emerges is that English is deeply embedded in structurally determined social inequalities, which can be observed both in the country of origin and in the destination society.

This paper investigates the nonstandard use of first‑person singular pronouns (myself and I) in coordinate constructions, such as John and I or John and myself. Native English speakers frequently disregard prescriptive grammar rules by using subject or reflexive forms in place of object forms in sentences like Give those papers to John and I. The frequency of such nonstandard usage raises questions, such as when and why speakers substitute nominative or reflexive pronouns for object pronouns in coordinate constructions, and what evidence exists for the existence of fixed constructions like X and I or X and myself. To address these questions, the study analyzes data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Findings provide strong evidence for the existence of an X and I construction in that the nonstandard form is common after the coordinator but not before. Evidence for an X and myself construction is weaker, since untriggered reflexives also appear outside coordinate constructions. First‑person singular forms are more likely to appear in hypercorrect and untriggered forms that other pronouns. The research suggests that X and I may be stored in a chunk, possibly due to overgeneralizations resulting from prescriptive corrections during language acquisition.

In the introduction for their recent state-of-the-art volume on English at the grassroots, Meierkord and Schneider (2021) point out the recurrent problem of Creolistic study not being fully incorporated into the World Englishes paradigm, arguing, like Mufwene (1997; 2001) and others, that English-based Creoles are best viewed as varieties of English ‘and, as such, require their integration into existing models and theories, too’ (11). Further work which seeks to overtly integrate Creole varieties within studies of English at the grassroots – the ‘new player in the World Englishes paradigm’ (Buschfeld 2001, 25) – has not been quickly forthcoming, though, with most of the work in the field focusing on ‘typical’ multilingual settings. In an attempt to remedy this, the current paper discusses the language situation in Trinidad, the last island in the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles. In Trinidad, Trinidadian English Creole (TEC) and Trinidadian English (TE) interact in a complex where English might be best viewed as a second dialect (ESD), rather than in one of the prototypical ENL, ESL, or EFL situations of acquisition or use (cf. Deuber 2014). After an exploration of the limited research that has been done on language use and social class in Trinidad, this paper compares those previous findings on morphosyntactic features with new data from short semi-structured interviews conducted with speakers who can be described as grassroots.

Kongish Daily, a Facebook page promoting Kongish – a creative, critical, and colloquial form of Hong Kong English with Cantonese inflections – has attracted a following in social media over the past decade. It has also sparked interest among sociolinguists interested in (post-)multilingual developments in East Asia. This study is built on Hansen Edwards’s (2016) premise that Hong Kong English would gain wider acceptance in Hong Kong as the cultural identity of local language users shifted amidst sociocultural transformations. We first provide an overview of the Kongish phenomenon, followed by a qualitative study involving 30 active Kongish users from diverse age groups, genders and occupations. Through semi-structured interviews, we explore users’ perceptions of language and identity. Our findings support Hansen Edwards’s prediction regarding the strengthening of Hong Kongers’ cultural identification, while revealing an evolving, counter-stereotypical Hong Kong culture as well as an opinion divide on the future trajectory of Kongish.

The present paper provides a small–scale exploratory analysis of L2 English pronunciation and accent aims among secondary school students in Germany – with a focus on the bath and lot vowels, rhoticity, and T–flapping. The eight learners investigated in the current study show blended use of Standard Southern British English (StSBrE) and Standard American (StAmE) phonological variants with relatively high degrees of variation between learners. StSBrE–oriented productions were dominant overall. Agreement of accent aim and L2 pronunciation was largely feature–dependent and limited overall but varied between learners.

Over the past two decades, English has become a key medium of instruction in higher education in non-native English contexts, especially Asian countries. Extant research highlights the rapid expansion of English-medium instruction (EMI) and challenges in policy implementation, revealing tensions between different language policy levels (i.e., macro, meso and micro). Thus, a multilevel analysis is needed to understand these tensions. This review examines factors influencing EMI adoption in China, Japan, Malaysia, and Nepal, focusing on policy implementation by educators and students. Findings show that EMI adoption is driven by English's role as a global lingua franca and the permeation of neoliberal ideologies at the macro policymaking level. Such a macro-level endorsement of monolingual EMI has resulted in micro-level inequalities for students, with resistance manifested through multilingual practices, such as translanguaging, in the classroom. The discrepancies between language policies and practices highlight the necessity of reassessing the adequacy of monolingual EMI policies and the importance of adopting a multilingual policy framework. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the trends observed in these contexts and recommends several policy directions for the future.

True crime podcasts are one of the most popular products in the landscape of media production: whether professionally produced or the fruit of amateur work, they rank highly in different charts, with a variety of topics and approaches. This article aims at starting the research on the kind of language these podcasts (might) have in common, with a particular interest in the features that might be found in so-called ‘amateur’ podcasts, which tend to have a more flexible, and colloquial, style and register. In particular, the research has focused on a sample podcast and on two representative episodes, which have been transcribed and analysed, in order to obtain an initial corpus of typical discourse markers. The focus has been specifically on pragmatic markers such as right, you know and other typical interjections of spoken interactions, which identify the register as spoken and colloquial. By using two corpus tools, the study has been able to highlight the frequency of these markers and their typical use in collocation.

This study reflects on Japan's language policy, focusing on the government‑led proposals implemented in 2006, which suggested replacing loanwords with Japanese equivalents, known as Gairaigo Iikae Teian ‘proposals for replacing loanwords’. By investigating English loanwords, this article explores the impact of English on Japanese vocabulary, while providing insights into the practical implementation of the government-led language policy in Japan for a broader global audience. It also clarifies that the objective of the proposals was not to strictly regulate the use of English loanwords but to offer suggestions, with replacement as one strategy to improve communication, especially when disseminating information through government agencies and media organisations. Through a quantitative investigation on the usage of English loanwords in the media, the results reveal that the overall number of media articles containing the loanwords in the proposed list has increased over the last 30 years. The findings also confirm that loanwords and their Japanese equivalents are not in competition, with one replacing the other. Instead, their usage exhibits a parallel trend in both frequency and increase rates.

Neoliberal forces have increased the use of English as a medium of instruction (MOI) in higher education globally. The status of English has shifted from being a curricular subject to the primary language of instruction, particularly in private higher education institutions. Drawing on Baldauf (2006), Kaplan and Baldauf (2003), and Spolsky (2009), and conducting a multi-level policy document analysis, this study set out to investigate the use of English as an MOI in Bangladeshi higher education. At the macro level, we analysed language-related policy documents, such as the National Education Policy (NEP), the Bangladesh National Qualifications Framework (BNQF), and University Grant Commission (UGC) policies. At the meso level, we examined various publicly available policy documents of a private university, including MOI statements, purpose and vision statements, admission requirements, curriculum, assessment, textbook recommendations, and advertisements for faculty positions. The findings revealed that while macro-level MOI policies are left open for meso-level interpretation, private universities have adopted an MOI policy that shifted from a nationalist Bangla-only ideology to a neoliberal English-only one, as evidenced in their practices and management initiatives. This shift has essentially served a covert colonial agenda under the guise of internationalisation and adoption of the American higher education model.

This paper analyses (t)-glottaling – the replacement of /t/ with the glottal stop [Ɂ] – in word-final position (e.g. that). This variable has been largely explored in relation to the following phonological environment, which is commonly divided into three main contexts: pre-consonantal (e.g. that man), pre-vocalic (e.g. that apple) and pre-pausal (e.g. what?). However, little research has been carried out on the preceding phonological context. This paper aims at expanding the usual limited set of constraints employed for (t) by considering both following and preceding phonological environments. Data was collected in three East Anglian communities (Colchester, Ipswich, and Norwich) from 36 participants, stratified by age, social class, and sex. Results show that (a) the preceding phonological environment plays a remarkable role, with vowels and nasals favouring glottalled variants, and (b) that (t)-glottaling has nearly completed its social change word-finally in spontaneous speech.

In reply to a recent article in English Today by David Li, it is pointed out that the use of a noun as a premodifier rather than an adjective appears to be increasing in English, perhaps particularly in the area of sports. The Australia team seems to be gaining ground at the expense of the Australian team, for example. Just why this should be happening is obscure, but multiple factors appear to be involved in the change. There are also instances where the change appears to be blocked.

Liverpool English, commonly known as ‘Scouse’, is often reported to be a low prestige variety of English. Despite its low prestige, it has been suggested that Scouse has displaced the traditional variety of the neighbouring Wirral peninsula. To this end, this study's objective was to investigate whether Liverpool and Wirral speech differ from one another as revealed through both an ultrasound and acoustic analysis of the lateral phoneme in teenage speech. The acoustic results showed that, surprisingly, teenagers from both Liverpool and the Wirral produced clear onset and dark coda laterals. Interestingly, the ultrasound findings revealed that both Liverpool and Wirral males displayed a preference for ‘less standard’ velarisation as a darkening mechanism, whilst females showed a preference for ‘more standard’ pharyngealisation. Differences between these darkening strategies were only evident through the ultrasound analysis. Therefore, in general, our findings showed that covert articulatory variation was evident between male and female adolescent speakers on the Wirral and in Liverpool.

This paper surveys studies that explore the experiences of multilingual English teachers (MET) teaching English to learners from the Eastern part of Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand). By MET, I refer to teachers who speak English as one of their multilingual repertoires and teach English to students from different linguistic backgrounds than their own (Galloway 2014). Studies have recently shown that Outer Circle has been establishing a role in providing English education to Expanding Circle learners. Moreover, it is also becoming common for teachers from Expanding Circle to cross national borders in order to teach English in another Expanding Circle country. This paper reviews studies specifically addressing those teachers and identifies three contact zones: (a) study abroad programs in Asian Outer Circle; (b) EFL classrooms; and (c) digital space. As there are some distinctive characteristics pertaining to different contact zones, I first briefly review the previous studies by each zone, followed by a synthesis of the research findings with a focus on how environment influences teachers' experiences based on the lens of intersectionality and situated power dynamics. Then, I conclude the review by discussing the problematic nature of treating this unique teacher population as pseudo-native speakers from a pedagogical perspective.

This study aims to uncover the dynamics of the evolution of English in Rwanda, using Schneider's (2007) Dynamic Model. Even though Rwanda has had no history of British colonial rule or that of any other Anglophone country, it currently presents a situation of a non-postcolonial environment where English plays a preponderant role on a par with many dimensions of the status of English in Outer Circle counties such as Uganda or Ghana. Despite the fact that the Dynamic Model was primarily meant to account for the evolution of English in postcolonial environments, its applicability (with a few caveats) to the current linguistic situation in Rwanda provides a robust articulation of the trajectorial development of English in this country.