In recent years, universities across Europe have increasingly adopted the use of English as an academic lingua franca. Our article discusses current trends in Swedish higher education by presenting the results of a large-scale survey on the use of English conducted at Stockholm University. The survey involved 668 staff and 4524 students and focused on the use of English for academic purposes and students' and teachers' attitudes to English as a medium of instruction. The results indicate that complex patterns of academic English use emerge, which are related to the specific discipline studied, the level of instruction (undergraduate versus Master's) and the receptive versus productive use of English. They also indicate that in the sciences the use of English is a pragmatic reality for both teachers and students, whereas in the humanities and social sciences, English is typically used as an additional or auxiliary language in parallel with Swedish.

The contemporary visibility and importance of English throughout the Asian region coupled with the emergence and development of distinct varieties of Asian Englishes have played an important part in the global story of English in recent years. Across Asia, the numbers of people having at least a functional command of the language have grown exponentially over the last four decades, and current changes in the sociolinguistic realities of the region are often so rapid that it is difficult for academic commentators to keep pace. One basic issue in the telling of this story is the question of what it is we mean by the term ‘Asia’, itself a word of contested etymology, whose geographical reference has ranged in application from the Middle East to Central Asia, and from the Indian sub-continent to Japan and Korea. In this article, my discussion will focus on the countries of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, as it is in these regions that we find not only the greatest concentration of ‘outer-circle’ English-using societies but also a number of the most populous English-learning and English-knowing nations in the world.

No abstract

This paper sets out to review current approaches to world Englishes from a range of perspectives, from English studies to sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, lexicography, 'popularizers' and critical linguistics. It then proceeds to consider current debates on English worldwide and world Englishes, noting the recent criticisms of the world Englishes approach from a rhetoric of a critical linguistics ironically at odds with the realities of many educational settings.

While Asian Englishes such as Indian English, Malaysian English, Philippine English, and Singapore English have gained wide acceptance in the past two decades, relatively little notice has been taken of`Hong Kong English'. This paper surveys the sociolinguistic background to the recognition of Hong Kong English, and considers the arguments in favour of a`paradigm shift' in approaches to this issue. The paper begins by reviewing the history of English in Hong Kong and language planning and language policies in the late colonial period. It then goes on to discuss the ideological background to English in Hong Kong, noting the persistence of the`monolingual myth' and the`invisibility myth' in a number of recent sociolinguistic discourses. In the later sections of the paper, the case is made not only for a recognition of Hong Kong English in terms of distinctive linguistic features at the levels of accent and vocabulary, but also with reference to the creativity of the variety, in literary as well as less formal contexts. Ultimately, it is suggested, the notion of a distinct variety rests not only on the recognition of features of language, but also on the acceptance of a new space, or spaces, for the discourses of Hong Kong English.