A consideration of ‘nativeness’, ‘foreignness’, expertise and language allegiance

The term ‘idiom’ can refer to two types of fixed expressions. First, in a narrow sense, idioms are ‘expressions whose idiomaticity is semantic; typical expressions are kick the bucket, spill the beans etc. Second, idiomaticity is a formal property of expressions and is more or less equated with the fixedness of form; for example, by and large’ (Stathi, 2006: 27). It is more common, as Moon (1997: 46) says, for idioms to refer to ‘multi-word items which are not the sum of their parts: they have holistic meanings which cannot be retrieved from the individual meanings of the component words.’ Idioms are thought to be ‘relatively frozen and to have severe grammatical restriction’ (Moon, 1997: 47), and so it might be generally taken that they do not permit any lexical or syntactic modification, but they have greater possibilities of modification than might be expected. There are many idioms with different structures in the English language; I have chosen the idioms with the syntactic structure V + the + N. In this paper I will try to show the degrees of modification, the possible reasons for their modifications and the significance of the definite article by using the British National Corpus (BNC) and Webcorp, a web concordancer.

With the change of linguistic, cultural and ethnic landscapes, multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic realities are increasing globally. In the case of the UK, the 2011 Census showed that the Asian or Asian British ethnic group category had one of the largest increases since 2001, with a third of the foreign-born population of the UK (2.4 million) now identifying as Asian British (Office for National Statistics, 2013). It is not surprising then, given the aforementioned demographic situation, to see many Asian-origin words in the English language. East Asian words are now entering into the English lexicon with unprecedented speed as a consequence of increased contact between East Asia and the English-speaking world.

An account of the state of English in Kenya and local attitudes towards the language

Many youngsters grow up across the United States using ‘Nonstandard English’. How can the educational system help them and their families come to terms with the standard language without doing social damage in the name of educational necessity?

One never quite knows what will catch on with ET readers and what will pass unremarked. Certainly, Louise Sylvester's piece ‘Unusual and dialect terms for scarecrows’ in ET42 (Apr 95) has prompted a remarkable – and painstakingly detailed – response, in the two replies that follow.

English is regularly perceived to be the global language that is used for cross-cultural communication by people from around the world (e.g., Crystal, 2003). Following international trends, English has exerted a presence in the cultures, languages, and interactional patterns of the peoples of Asia (Kachru, 1998: 91). The status afforded English native and near-native speakers reflects the perceived importance and interpersonal functionality of English in the region, and efforts by Asian governments to teach English at younger ages, as well as the demand for English ability by corporations, the media, and individuals, demonstrate its perceived instrumentality. In spite of the presumption of usefulness, there have been surprisingly few studies investigating Asian learners' perceptions of and decision to use English in specific settings. There is also a need for research that extends beyond individual countries to include pan-Asian issues, particularly in the “lesser-researched expanding-circle societies, including … Japan … [and] Thailand” (Bolton, 2008: 9). In order to address this gap in the literature and inform discussions about the comparability of students across Asian Expanding Circle countries, the aim of the present study is to compare and contrast how students in one Southeast Asian Expanding Circle country (i.e., Thailand) and one East Asian Expanding Circle country (i.e., Japan) view the usefulness of English to their lives.

The case for and against English as tomorrow's ‘Single European Language’

This article is about some very short words: the permutations for monosyllables in common use in standard British English having the phonetic pattern: single consonant + short vowel + single consonant. It is similar, therefore, to my article ‘Consonantal beginnings’ (ET80), in which I looked at what pairs of consonantal sounds could be found at the beginnings of English words. The pronunciation is to be taken as that given in the OED for British English.

A survey ranging from the revolutionary work of Isaac Pitman in the nineteenth century through spelling reform and global English to the contemporary issue of the world's endangered languages

Excerpts from the cultural identity narratives and follow-up interviews of a group of ethnic Chinese majors in English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, identifying recurrent issues and metaphors.

IN HONG KONG, how have recent political events such as the Handover (change of sovereignty from Britain to China) in 1997 impacted on young people's sense of self? What cultural groups do they now identify with and why? What self-labels do they prefer? This article reports on a qualitative, sociocultural investigation that took place at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a bilingual English/Chinese institution. Hong Kong have had a significant impact on shaping and sometimes changing students' cultural identities. The Handover, in particular, caused them to reflect on and even question their place in the world. Just before the change of sovereignty, many applied for passports whose nature sometimes brought them into conflict with their parents and grandparents.

In sound recordings of British English from the first part of the last century we can hear some speakers whose pronunciation of the letter r, in words such as ring, bread and around, sounded just like a /w/. We know, too, from literary texts, that it goes back further. This article is about another, newer, pronunciation of /r/ in British English, close to /w/, but distinct from it, that has increased in frequency and prominence in the last decade. In it, the lips are less pursed than for a /w/ and you sense there is less muscular tension than for what we might call the ‘traditional’ /r/ of speakers of standard English. In ambiguous contexts it could still cause confusion, as between real and wheel, or crack and quack. It may occur less in Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents than in ones from England.

WHITNEY F BOLTON considers the extent to which words that are ‘usually’ nouns frequently function as verbs — and sometimes in rather unexpected ways.

Just after the start of the research project Bridging the Unbridgeable: Linguists, Prescriptivists and the General Public in 2011, we laid our hands on a file called ‘Reactions to L. Trap’. The file contains well over 200 documents: letters, picture postcards, notes, newspaper clippings, and various other items, almost all of them relating to the reception of a pamphlet called The Language Trap, written by John Honey (1933–2001) and published in 1983 by the British National Council for Educational Standards (NCES). The file was offered for sale by Plurabelle Books in Cambridge as part of the late John Honey's library, and acquiring it offered a unique opportunity to study the reception of this highly controversial publication, not only by linguists, but also by the general public. Both groups responded in large numbers to the publicity the pamphlet inspired, in the press as well as on the radio.

A consideration of recent attitudes to teaching the traditional literary canon of English within the cultural tradition of the Western world

A report on the nature, origin and circumstances of Aussie argot under the big top