In Chapter 10, we examine how cross-cultural pragmatics – in particular, cross-cultural research on expressions – can be applied to applied linguistics. More specifically, we explore how the study of expressions can provide insight into in-depth problems in language learning and language use, by examining cross-cultural pragmatic differences between the ways in which British learners of Chinese and Chinese learners of English evaluate a set of pragmatically important expressions in their target language. Chapter 10 reveals that the use of seemingly ‘simple’ pragmatically salient expressions such as sorry in English can cause significant difficulties for foreign language learners. In methodological terms, the present chapter first conducts an ancillary research, i.e. questionnaires, followed by a contrastive pragmatic exploration, i.e. interviews conducted with language learners.

Despite the existence of long-held binaries between secular and sacred, private and public spaces, school and religious literacies in many contemporary societies, the significance of religion and its relationship to education and society more broadly has become increasingly topical. Yet, it is only recently that the investigation of the nexus of discourse and religion in educational practice has started to receive some scholarly attention. In this chapter, religion is understood as a cultural practice, historically situated and embedded in specific local and global contexts. This view of religion stresses the social alongside the subjective or experiential dimensions. It explores how, through active participation and apprenticeship in culturally appropriate practices and behaviors, often mediated intergenerationally, and the mobilization of linguistic and other semiotic resources but also affective, social and material resources, membership in religious communities is constructed and affirmed. The chapter reviews research strands that have explored different aspects of discourse and religion in educational practice as a growing interdisciplinary field. Research strands have examined the place and purpose of religion in general and evangelical Christianity in particular in English Language Teaching (ELT) programs and the interplay of religion and teaching and learning in a wide range of religious and increasingly secular educational contexts. They provide useful insights for scholars of discourse studies into issues of identity, socialization, pedagogy and language policy.