Richard Hogg was one of the founding editors of English Language and Linguistics up to his sudden death in 2007. For a short appreciation see Denison & Aarts (Reference Denison and Aarts2007). The International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE), which he had helped to set up, was already in informal operation, though not formally inaugurated until its first conference in Freiburg in November 2008.

ISLE instituted a prize in Richard Hogg's memory for a paper on any research-related topic in English language or English linguistics. Many individuals contributed generously to the prize fund, as did Cambridge University Press. A committee chaired by Professor Terttu Nevalainen, Vice President (Research), was set up to judge the entries and to provide feedback to their authors. The prize is aimed at early-career scholars, and the competition has been running successfully since 2008. The winner in the first year of the competition was Rhona Alcorn, currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Her prize-winning essay, Alcorn (Reference Alcorn2008), an abridged version of an Edinburgh MSc thesis submitted in August 2007, is available on the ISLE website. We are delighted that she has chosen to submit a revised version to ELL. It has gone through the normal review procedure and appears in this issue.