The unprecedented spread of the use of English in business worldwide has been accompanied by an increasing number of studies looking at the use of English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF) (Louhiala-Salminen & Kankaanranta, 2011) among non-native English speakers, mostly in Europe but also in Asia. Research thus far has focused mainly on analysis of texts and discourses produced by BELF users, whereas in-depth research investigating users’ sense making of their use of English has been limited. In order to fill this gap, this thesis places BELF users at the centre of the research by listening to their narratives, to explore their subjective views on their experiences of language use in global business contexts. The focus of the study is on Japanese business people who had relatively low exposure to English before they started using English at work, with the aim of illustrating the ways in which they perceive and make sense of their experiences as BELF users. The participants are 34 business people who were born and educated exclusively in Japan, and have accumulated a range of experiences using English in a global business context. Thematic analysis of their narratives reveals that participants share certain challenges such as attending and contributing in multinational meetings, dealing with lower productivity and avoiding mistakes in various communicative situations. Common approaches among the participants to negotiate such challenges include continuously developing the English skills needed to perform their business goals, as well as other means such as gaining power in communication through developing the quality of information and utilising stronger economic relations. Their stories also highlight that their use of English is characterised by the coexistence of English and Japanese, owing to the ‘monolinguistic’ nature of Japanese business communication. Finally, it is revealed that they change their perception towards using English as they progress through their career. Their perceptions are influenced by various factors such as their career paths, the organisations they belong to, and the interlocutors they have dealt with. To conclude, this thesis provides insight into the emic view of non-native English users when they are trying to achieve their professional goals in business contexts. By offering an alternative angle to existing BELF studies, the thesis contributes towards a more holistic and multi-dimensional understanding of this increasingly complex phenomenon.

The aim of this research was to find ways that would help reconcile contested ethical and pedagogic issues raised by the phenomenon of Teaching English as a Missionary Language (TEML): that is, the evangelical Christian use of English Language Teaching (ELT) as a means for achieving religious ends. Four aspects of ELT were examined as a way to identify factors that could contribute to an improved understanding between evangelical Christians and opponents of the appropriation of ELT for religious ends. These were cultural and linguistic hegemony, teacher authority, ethical accountability and teacher identity. This was done by using a combination of qualitative research methods and theological reflection to analyse the data from four case studies about why and how evangelical Christians taught English to speakers of other languages. A revised evangelical identity was used to create an original theological theory of action that describes the characteristics of an evangelical practice of ELT in a way that addresses criticisms made by ELT professionals. The new theory describes how the integration of knowledge drawn from human experience, theology and the social sciences can contribute to the mediation of the Christian faith in modern society. It incorporates a Christocentric understanding of mission as missio Dei, moral transparency regarding evangelical Christian motivation for teaching English and the pursuit of pedagogic excellence. The contribution to the understanding and practice of ELT by evangelical Christians that this research makes is that, by a embracing a Christocentric paradigm of mission as missio Dei and adopting a dialogic collaborative pedagogy, evangelical Christians can make a unique contribution on the basis of their faith towards a redemptive and harmonious relationship with their students and the wider community of ELT professionals.

In this thesis, some of the functions of punctuation marks in digital discourse are explored. A theoretical model of punctuation mark function was generated specifically for this project and is based in rhetorical theory. According to this model, punctuation marks can function in three ways: First, they can build or damage the credibility of the writer; second, they can clarify the meanings of texts in a number of ways; and third, they can convey emotional and relational meaning. Two empirical studies are presented in this thesis. The first uses data from text-messages and the second uses data from message boards. For the text-message study, a new method of data collection was employed: Respondents were given Discourse Completion Tasks that asked what text-message they would send in a series of four respective hypothetical contexts; they were then asked to type out and send their responses, in text-messages, to email addresses. For the second study, data was taken from Reddit message boards on the Internet. In the analysis sections of the thesis, punctuation marks are examined in the collected data according to the rhetorical model with special attention being paid to how punctuation marks can convey emotional and relational meaning; and they are also examined according to how they influence speech acts. It is concluded that different punctuation marks can function in a variety of ways, and that punctuation marks can exert a powerful influence on speech acts. It is furthermore concluded that the thesis’s rhetorical model is effective both as a description of the ways punctuation marks can function and as a guide for analysis.

This thesis centres on how recipes and songs can generate an identity for a community in relocation. I focus upon the South Asian community in Lockwood, West Yorkshire, and show how cultural practices have migrated and relocated from the homeland to the diaspora. I read these oral texts as literature, which allows them to be heard outside the domestic arena. Following an oral history methodology, this ethnographical study focuses on three areas of significance: the matrilineal, nostalgia, and space. Each of these themes has been used to reveal how diasporic identity is attained and maintained through recipes and songs. I illustrate how the dynamics of a particular type of nostalgia, which I have termed as migrational nostalgia, allows a community in diaspora to flourish. The concept of space and time is revealed as complex and becomes multi layered when discussing a diasporic community. I have drawn upon the works of Julia Kristeva and Homi Bhabha, in particular, to analyze these narratives and position them within a liminal space. I further question what it means for a cultural practice to be legitimate and explore the idea that ultimately for those in diasporic communities authenticity can be found in the maternal voice. I show that the validation for a dish or a song is sought after in relocation and this is sustained by transmitting the oral texts through dimensions of maternal genealogy. All of these factors culminate in a unique identity for a diasporic group, which has its foundations in an alternative space and time.

The size of the blogosphere has long been a contentious issue amongst people researching the social media as it cannot be accurately determined. Bodies (BlogPulse, BlogScope, Technorati, etc.) which used to track the growing phenomenon across the world were careful with their choice of words when reporting on its size, such as Sifry’s Technorati report which said, “On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog” (Sifry, 2006, August 6). However, as Rosenberg (2006, August 9) points out, “… it doesn’t really matter. There’s still a revolution going on.” This ‘revolution’ is dominated by young people and in Malaysia, it was found that 74% of the bloggers in Malaysia were below 25 years old (Windows Live Spaces, 2006) but there is limited study on the phenomenon of casual blogging amongst this age group in Malaysia and the use of English in the blogs. The current study contributes to this body of literature, drawing from works on blogging, linguistic analysis, identity, and varieties of English. It adopts the social-constructivist framework and postulates that blogging is a social action which causes the blogosphere to be in a state of constant revision where “individuals create their own subjective meanings of their experiences through interactions with each other and their surrounding environment” (Hartas, 2010:44). This study used mixed methods in order to answer the research questions using three instruments: survey, interview, and weblog analysis to yield the data needed to investigate the content and interactive blog communication of selected young Malaysian casual bloggers who blog in English. The survey data yielded information about their blogging habits and content; the interview data yielded information about their language learning endeavours which influenced their choice of language or varieties of language in their blogs; and the in-depth analysis of one blog yielded information on how language was used in the blog to achieve communicative intent. The findings reveal the blogging habits of young Malaysian bloggers, and how their attitude towards their identity as Malaysians using English and socio-cultural factors influence their choice of language and/or varieties of English in their blog communication. It discovers the unconventional manner of using an existing language to achieve communicative intent among those in the same blogospheric region. This study makes both the bloggers and their blog texts the focus of its research.

This study examines the nature of a particular type of atypical reference. In [1], it is possible to understand ‘a man who…’ as a newly introduced referent or ‘type’. But once seen in context, where the identity of this particular man has been firmly established, it becomes clear that its function is more definite than indefinite. [1] […] a man who achieved the rare feat of becoming a pivotal member of the Cameron inner circle in the space of just a few months in the summer and autumn of 2007 Expressions such as that in [1], with the structure A(n)+NOUN+RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSE are examined in the context of British English journalistic opinion writing from four different, but related perspectives: - Readers’ interpretations: Empirical evidence from two experiments shows that readers largely do not interpret the expression as referring to a ‘type’, but rather to the previously mentioned, fully-identified entity. The results also suggest that the amount and detail of conceptual information in the relative clause plays a role in the interpretation. - Cognitive processes in referring: The expression is examined and analysed alongside cognitive models of referring and it is shown that these expressions are considered ‘accessible’ in the mind of the addressee. - Lexical cohesive ties: The meaning relation of co-extension (Hasan 1985) is exploited to explain how these expressions become functionally definite within their specific context. Cohesive semantic ties (i.e. similarity chains)between the expression and the preceding text and on-going discourse aid the transformation from formally indefinite to functionally definite. - Insights on the discourse: Insights from linguists and journalists are brought together to examine the function of these expressions. It is suggested that they have a dual function, to refer to the identified individual as well as to others with similar features. This study concludes that this atypical expression carries both definite and indefinite information and to fully capture its use and function, the entire discourse event needs to be taken into consideration.

This is a study of the letters of Joan and Maria Thynne, 1575-1611. It achieves in bringing together archival research, close reading and socio-historical context with the methods and concepts from historical pragmatics. This cross-disciplinary and multi-dimensional approach is demonstrated to be a valuable way of providing more nuanced readings of the letters and of extracting their communicative forms and functions. These documents reward close scrutiny, and the findings of this study offer significant and important contributions to the fields of historical linguistics, early modern rhetoric, paleography, women’s history and letter-writing, as well as for the Thynne family more specifically. Following the theoretical introduction and a short biography of the Thynne family, there are five analytical chapters. The first, Chapter 3, asks how the letters’ prose was organized into meaningful units of information – describing a variety of pre-standard uses for punctuation as well as the organizational and elocutionary functions of other pragmatic markers. Chapter 4 examines the sociopragmatic significance of performative speech act verbs such as beseech and confess and shows how individual manifestations of these forms actually reflect and reiterate larger aspects of early modern English culture and sociability. Chapter 5 compares Joan’s holograph letters and those prepared for her by scribes, exhibiting the social, graphic and linguistic implications of using a scribe. The only direct correspondence from the letters – consisting of two letters sent between Joan and Lucy Audley (Maria’s mother) in 1602 – is the topic of Chapter 6, which discusses rhetoric, language and text as ways of negotiating an awkward relationship, concluding that these features must be considered in respect to one another and in relation to the other letter in order to fully describe their significance. Chapter 7 extends a discussion on ‘sincerity’ begun in Chapter 6 by considering it alongside other ‘voices’ in Maria’s letters – namely sarcasm and seriousness – which are described as interrelated communicative styles dependent upon an anxious awareness of the gap between expression and meaning. The sum of these analyses not only proves historical pragmatics to be a productive method of investigating and systematically describing meaning in individual letter-collections from early modern England, but also suggests a range of new questions, which are presented in the conclusion. Newly prepared diplomatic transcriptions of all the letters are provided in Appendix 1.

This thesis is concerned with the development of English courses in a Department of Law in Japan. It presents a case for the introduction of courses in English for Academic Purposes. It begins with a description of the setting for the present research, which consists of the historical development of legal education in Japan (chapter 1) and a study of Japanese approaches to English language teaching (chapter 2). This is followed by a survey of previous work into the language of the law and the teaching of legal English (chapters 3 and 4). Chapter 5 considers the needs of students who are required to read legal textbooks in English and reports on an investigation into the lexis of these textbooks. The analysis (using computational concordancing methods) demonstrates that the needs of undergraduates are not covered by existing wordlists or by proposed standards that would ignore the special needs of law students. A list of essential lexis is proposed, and the collocations of frequent legal terms are identified, thus providing a list of common legal phrases that could be valuable as a teaching resource. Chapter 6 reports on a questionnaire survey into the attitudes of students, law teachers and English teachers to the existing courses and to possible innovations. This reveals that many students and some teachers would welcome changes but that there are conflicting of attitudes and resistance to change by some staff members. Chapter 7 draws on the findings of the lexical research and the attitude survey to suggest the introduction of a more varied English curriculum that should be acceptable to teachers and students and that includes courses relating to the language of the law. Proposals are also made for staff development. Chapter 8 provides a short postscript with suggestions for further research.

In recent years, phonics instruction in early literacy education has gained in popularity due to its critical role in facilitating phonological awareness and processing skills, said to enable the self-teaching mechanism inherent in an alphabetic language. These claims are based on research on L1 learners of English, however: little has been reported on the utility of phonics instruction for foreign language learners. This study therefore investigated young Taiwanese learners of English who had undergone phonics instruction as part of their EFL programme of study. Textbook analysis, teacher interviews, a student questionnaire, and a battery of diagnostic tests and tasks were used to uncover the role and efficacy of phonics in Taiwanese EFL learners’ literacy development as well as the underlying factors that contribute to shape its role and affect its efficacy. The data was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively and findings related to the presentation and practice of phonics teaching in class, teachers’ and learners’ perceptions and beliefs related to phonics and English literacy, and learners’ strategy use in oral reading, spelling and word learning were analyzed and discussed. The results revealed that due to the influences of socio-contextual constraints, learners’ insufficient phonological skills, the absence of a well-developed spoken system in the learners, and a distinctive L1 writing system, phonics plays a distinctively different role for young Taiwanese learners of English from the one it plays for English L1 learners.

The status of the cross-linguistic dimension of second language learning, and hence of L2 pedagogy, appears to have been systematically underplayed in epicentric, i.e. flowing from centre to periphery, theories of second language acquisition (SLA). Indeed, following the advent of cognitivism, mainstream SLA theory has frequently sought to marginalize anything suggestive of a contrastive paradigm. SLA conceptions of the nature of the influence of a learner’s first language on L2 acquisition and performance have tended to take the form of reductive dichotomies of the interference versus facilitative resource type – a mutually exclusive either/or interpretation. Consciously or otherwise, epicentric theories of L2 learning and pedagogy have filtered down to the language improvement and language awareness components of TESOL initial teacher education (ITE) and in-service education and training (INSET), where the focus is exclusively monolingual L2 and necessity all too often masquerades as principle. Against this backdrop, the present inquiry set out to evaluate the perceived benefits of an explicitly cross-linguistic (L1/L2) approach to language awareness on an L2 ITE program for pre-service trainees from the Japanese EFL context. Based on the evaluative response data from the non-native speaker (NNS) program participants, I invoke the notion of analytic generalization to argue that an explicit focus on selected cross-linguistic aspects of L2 learning, together with awareness-raising in respect of a range of context-specific ESOL-related issues has the potential to positively contribute both to trainees’ L2 development and to their development as pre-service TESOL professionals. The thesis further argues for a more holistic appreciation of the dynamic, complex nature of cross-linguistic influence viewed within a broader, context-specific conception of the L2 Teacher Language Awareness (L2 TLA) construct.