This paper focuses on the construction of language expertise in international, university-level English-medium courses where English is used as a lingua franca. Even if the courses are not language courses, language sometimes becomes the topic of discussion in the form of language correcting and commentary. This paper looks into these instances,…

In this paper, we focus on comments on language issues from a historical perspective. The concept of the layperson (non-linguist) is discussed to identify laypeople and lay comments in history when the modern concept of a linguist did not yet exist. Two studies show how the historical perspective complements modern research on folk linguistics.…

This paper focusses on language and education issues in Malaysia as they have unfolded in the context of nation building, societal multilingualism and globalization from independence to the present day. The paper first examines the origin and nature of language and medium-of-instruction policies in Malaysia and the rationale for them. Secondly, it…

This paper considers the real mother tongues of Singapore, namely the Chinese "dialects" and Singlish, the linguistic varieties which, respectively, arrived with the original immigrants to the rapidly developing British colony, and evolved in the dynamic multilingual ecology over the decades. Curiously these mother tongues have been regarded with…

This collection of articles includes: "Introducing Applied Linguistics in Africa" (Sinfree Makoni and Ulrike H. Meinhof); "Language Ideology and Politics: A Critical Appraisal of French as Second Official Language in Nigeria" (Tope Omoniyi); "The Democratisation of Indigenous Languages: The Case of Malawi" (Themba Moyo); "Classroom Code-Switching…