Edinburgh Working Papers is intended to show a yearly cross-section of current work in Edinburgh's Department of Applied Linguistics and to elicit reactions and criticism. Papers in this compilation include the following: "Asymmetric Resetting of the Non-Empty Topic Parameter by Chinese-Speaking Learners of English"; "The Sociolinguistic Status of English in Malta"; "Interlanguage Phonology: The Perceptual Development of Durational Contrasts by English-Speaking Learners of Japanese"; "Participant Reference in Greek Personal Experience Narratives"; "Reading, Culture, and Cognition"; "Cluster Analysis and the Interlanguage Lexicon"; "Interactional Listening Tasks: A Comparative Study of Strategy and Practice Teaching Approaches"; "Lesson Beginnings"; "Where True Power Lies: Modality as an Indication of Power in Two Institutionalised Domains of Language Use"; "Tense, Aspect and the Busconductor Hines--The Literary Function of Non-Standard Language in the Fiction of James Kelman"; "A Pragmatics of Verbal Irony in Literary Discourse: An Example from Drama"; and "An Investigation into Learners' Reactions to Learner Training for Self-Access Listening." (JL)