This chapter focuses upon two contrasting features of the linguistic situation in Australia. On the one hand, together with nationhood, the past hundred or so years have seen the evolution of a distinct national variety of English in Australia recognizable also outside Australia. On the other, Australia, though a young nation, has been continuously inhabited by the various Aborigine and Torre Strait Islander communities for thousands of years. These have traditionally spoken a wide variety of different languages, some of which of great interest to linguists due to their peculiarity. Increasingly, although the use of Aborigine languages has until very recently been in steady decline, since the 1950s in particular, diverse ethnic groups speaking a variety of languages, both European and Asian, have settled in Australia. The National Policy on Languages (1987) formally directed Australia towards multilingualism and the teaching of English as a first and second language is promoted together with that of Aborigine and community languages. Consequently, Australia has been one of the first nations to try to capitalise on its own linguistic diversity, both as a means of strengthening links with the outside world and as a way of promoting a multiethnic and multicultural society at home. Australia presents then an interesting case study for those working with discourse in immigration domains who are concerned with the way that language policy (or the lack of one) may effect social harmony and serve not only as an indicator of the way that migrants are received and treated, but also a catalyst in itself for greater mutual respect.

Like many scholars of his time, for Charles Darwin (1809-1882), written correspondence constituted both an important mode of discourse for general social interaction and a specific text genre through which scientific research was discussed and conducted (see Gotti 2003: 112). He made frequent use of letters, conducting much of his relations with the scientific community at a distance. From the seclusion of Down House (Downe, Kent), he could engage actively in the academic and public debate on evolution both through his supporters such as Thomas Huxley and Joseph Hooker in Britain and Asa Gray in the USA, and through direct correspondence with scholars and general readers on both sides of the evolution debate. Among Darwin’s correspondents were people from widely different social backgrounds - something no doubt facilitated by the 1840 reform of the Royal Mail and the introduction of the so-called Uniform Penny Post. Such interaction contributed directly not only to the diffusion of Darwin’s theories, but also, in many aspects, directly to their formulation, as seen in the numerous amendments in the five subsequent editions to the first edition of On the Origin of the Species (henceforth Origin) of 1859. Darwin’s correspondence then represents an example of the genre of letter writing that is to be found not at the periphery of a scientific enterprise but at its centre. In this paper, we analyse a corpus of the correspondence of Charles Darwin (taken from that published in edited form as Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (Vols I and II); More Letters of Charles Darwin (Vols I and II)) from the general perspective of text genre (Swales 1990) and of register analysis (Halliday et al, 1964), the latter being especially relevant given that, as Nevalainen and Tanskanen (2007) show, letter-writing is a form of social interaction which has, from its beings, always been highly context-sensitive. We look at Darwin’s Letters from the perspective firstly of linguistic complexity, then from the point of view of the interpersonal elements that they display. Finally we analyse the lexis and terminology employed to refer to aspects of Darwin’s theories of the origin of life and descent through modification. Comparison is made both between the various types of letters written by Darwin and between Darwin’s correspondence and a reference corpus of his other works.

In this article we will discuss the phenomenon of metaphor and metonyms in lexis and expressions relating to body parts in the Albanian language as manifested in the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit and in Old Geg documents. Before doing so, it is expedient to briefly run over some of the key concepts behind metaphor, metonymy and embodiment so as to provide the theoretical background for the discussion which follows and also to make clear how complex and topical a theoretical area metaphors and metonymy are even in more frequently studied languages such as English and thus demonstrate how valuable studies such as this into a so-called lesser-spoken language may prove to be. As the title suggests, our aim is not to offer a definitive treatment of this area but rather to produce a preliminary study which will raise more questions than it will proverbially answer but which will, the authors hope, serve as a catalyst for other such studies not just in Albanian in as diverse languages, varieties and cultural contexts as possible.

Blood the substance and the concept, has long been accorded special significance in both religion (see the different Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions relating to the status of blood and hence how it may be treated or consumed / or not) and in medical science (see Galen, of Pergamon, the Greek Physician, who saw it as the link between body and soul). Consequently, the term ‘blood’ has acquired a series of complex metaphorical meanings in many languages and has come to carry a great deal of “cultural baggage” (Rutman and Rutman 1984) even when used in scientific discourse, post-Harvey. In this study we examine how it is used in two very different oeuvres, that of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), who needs no introduction, and of Edith Durham (1863-1944), the anthropologist famous for her works on the inhabitants of the Balkans and northern Albania and their traditions (a complex patchwork of different ethnic groups including followers of both Christianity and Islam, still adhering in some respects to much older beliefs). This paper will examine the part played by blood as a metaphor for kinship and descendance in the exposition of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which famously failed to take genetics into consideration, and of Durham’s description of Northern Albanian society in particular the importance of so-called blood relationships within the Kanun (or set of traditional laws, then largely unwritten). Both oeuvres present examples of popularisation of science but interestingly moving in different directions, for Darwin, using a traditional “folk-science” concept to explain a radical new theory, and, in the case of Durham, explaining traditional concepts from a foreign culture in terms of anthropology and in another language (English). The method adopted will be to focus on the terms each scholar adopts and the experiential categories underlying them to expound their theory from the perspective of frame semantics (Fillmore 1976) and cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987/1991), from a corpus of 15 of Darwin’s works and 4 of Durham’s, and, secondly through comparison of these with others created from a parallel corpora of drawn from the popular magazine Scientific American (1881-1898).

English has become the most influential language for international discourse (Weber 1997; Graddol 2006) and it is tempting to foresee a largely monolingual future at the international level, where other languages become irrelevant. Such a simplistic view sees the adoption of English as something univer-sal and uniform with little room for variation, local identity, or other lingua francas. Data shows that other lingua francas are not inevitably in decline. Diverse languages – e.g. Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, French – continue to be important regionally or in certain discourse contexts (Weber 1997; Ostler 2010; Ro-nen et al. 2014) and on the internet. In this paper, we look at recent data from a variety of sources (Ronen et al. 2014; Olivié et al. 2015), in an attempt to examine the situation regarding languages and their influences in the world today. In particular, we will attempt to take into account the fact that much language distribution is today no longer tied in with territorial dimensions. New media such as the internet, as well as mass migra-tion between countries, have made it less easy to identify specific languages with precise geographical areas. Furthermore, although the world is increasingly globalised, significant regional divisions still exist in the use of media (especially in the case of China) making it difficult at present to make direct comparisons about language use. In this complex scenario, it is also apparent that as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) varia-tions emerge and gain in influence (see Seidlhofer 2011), the identity of English will change and become itself a reflection of a plurilingual reality in which speakers typically have at their disposal a repertoire of different languages.

Hitherto, most research into cohesion has concentrated on texts (usually written) only in standard Native Speaker English – e.g. Halliday and Hasan (1976). By contrast, following on the work in anaphora of such scholars as Reinhart (1983) and Cornish (1999), Christiansen (2011) describes cohesion as an interactive process focusing on the link between text cohesion and discourse coherence. Such a consideration of cohesion from the perspective of discourse (i.e. the process of which text is the product -- Widdowson 1984, p. 100) is especially relevant within a lingua franca context as the issue of different variations of ELF and inter-cultural concerns (Guido 2008) add extra dimensions to the complex multi-code interaction. In this case study, six extracts of transcripts (approximately 1000 words each), taken from the VOICE corpus (2011) of conference question and answer sessions (spoken interaction) set in multicultural university contexts are analysed in depth by means of a qualitative method.

Most existing research into cohesion has concentrated only on texts (usually written) and then only in standard English – e.g. Quirk et al. (1972), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Halliday (2004). Following on the work in anaphora of such scholars as Reinhart (1983) and Cornish (1999), Christiansen (2011) describes cohesion as an interactive process focusing on the link between text cohesion and discourse coherence, viewed from the standpoints of both addressor and addressee. A consideration of cohesion within the context of discourse (seen as the process of which text is the product see Widdowson 1984: 100) is especially relevant within a lingua franca context because the issue of different varieties of ELF and inter-cultural concerns (see Guido 2008) add extra dimensions to the complex multi-code interaction of which cohesion must be seen not only as the key element in the co-construction of a dialogic text in interaction, but crucially as constituting the interface between the various ELF varieties in the ongoing development of discourse. As such, it is fundamental for the interpretation of the same discourse by participants. In this case study, six extracts of transcripts (approximately 1000 words each), taken from the VOICE corpus (2011) of conference question and answer sessions (spoken interaction) set in multicultural university contexts are analysed in depth by means of a qualitative method. The types of cohesive device that six selected speakers of diverse ELF backgrounds use are examined to test the hypothesis that, in such a context, speakers differently achieve cohesion both within their own speaker turns and relating to other speakers’ turns, despite the fact that conference interaction is generally assumed to constitute part of an internationally-shared academic register.

This book represents a fresh look at cohesion, the point of departure being Halliday and Hasan’s seminal Cohesion in English, which is examined in depth as are other notable approaches to cohesion such as Hoey’s Patterns of Lexis in Text. It also compares many different studies of relevance to cohesion from other areas of linguistics, such as: generative grammar, FSP, and corpus linguistics. In this way, this work extends discussion of cohesion beyond the realms of systemic linguistics to include a broader spectrum of approaches including research into languages other than English. The main focus, however, is on varieties of English and on general and specialised discourse types. Rather than limiting itself to the text as product, the manifestation of a discourse, this book looks at cohesion from the wider perspective of discourse, seen as an interactive process. Consequently, different sociolinguistic and cultural factors are also taken into consideration. Among the specific questions asked are: how far is cohesion a constitutive feature of text? What is the precise link between cohesion and coherence? What specific role does discourse have in phenomena such as anaphora? Do such things as cohesive universals exist across languages? How far do socio-cultural, or discourse-specific, conventions contribute to the type and degree of cohesion present in a text?

Written correspondence has always constituted a specific text genre through which scientific research is both discussed and carried out (see Gotti 2010), especially so in the case of the biologist Charles Darwin, who conducted most of his relations with the scientific community at a distance but remained actively engaged in the debate on evolution. Written correspondence, therefore, lay at the very heart of Darwin’s scientific enterprise (Christiansen 2010). Darwin’s correspondence also presents fertile terrain for an investigation into the popularization of science because his various correspondents constitute a cross section of the wider discourse community (both expert and non-expert) involved in the new science of natural history. In particular, letter-writing is a form of interaction which has always been highly context-sensitive (Nevalainen and Tanskanen 2007) and thus examining correspondence provides ample opportunity to observe many aspects of social-semiotics that are also relevant to the dichotomy between pure and popularized science (e.g. genre and register – see Christiansen 2010). This chapter will investigate the use of conjunctions in Darwin’s correspondence specifically on evolution (taken from that published in edited form as Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (Vols I and II); More Letters of Charles Darwin (Vols I and II), comparing that to fellow natural historians (approx. 310,000 words) with that to non-experts (approx. 24,500 words) in which his scientific ideas are “popularized”. Conjunctions are important because they play a fundamental role in the cohesion of texts (Halliday and Hasan 1976) providing overt links between clauses and sentences without being a constituent of them (Chris- tiansen 2011) and thus are pivotal in the way that arguments are presented and the way that the ideational content of different clauses are woven together into a coherent discourse. Notwithstanding their centrality, little research has been done into types of conjunctions from the perspective of their cohesive function (additive, adversative etc.; internal, external etc – see Halliday and Hasan 1976) and their contrasting uses in scientific and popularized scientific discourses.

This paper practical ways, and the theory behind various methodologies, in which digital video material can be integrated into language lessons for young learners in such a way as to encourage communicative learning and the acquisistion of speaking skills.

In this paper, we investigate whether the nativeness principle in language teaching and learning can ever be replaced by something more reflective of the fact that English has become not just an international lingua franca in the traditional sense of Latin, for example, but also a fluid and spontaneous set of language variations (Widdowson 2015) that emerge in contexts where L1 speakers of different languages use English primarily as users, rather than as mere learners. We look for signs that the nativeness principle is losing influence by trying to gauge how far respondents to a survey hold views which show that they are NES-norm oriented in their attitudes to English and also how they react to ELF-oriented alternatives. The methodology adopted is both qualitative and quantitative and is based around analysis of a dedicated online questionnaire administered to 188 learners of English, mostly at school or university, comparing answers to the question “Why are you learning English?”, where respondents were asked to choose between ten reasons (more than one option could be chosen) and reactions to twelve statements relating to attitudes to English (classified as NES-norm oriented, ELF-oriented, or neutral) that were marked on a five-point Likert scale. Responses are analysed both individually and in comparison with each other (by measuring the correlation coefficient r) to better observe underlying trends.

This paper reports an experiment in which subjects were required to assess the grammatical accuracy of the spoken production of various speakers. Subjects were divided into groups and for each group one of the original voices was replaced by a computer-generated voice. A comparison was made between the mean scores given to the original voices and those given to the computer-generated ones. In this way the effect of different degrees of proficiency in pronunciation and fluency on the assessment of grammatical accuracy could be measured. It was found that there were noticeable differences in the mean marks given to the original and computer-generated voices, generally in favour of the original voices, whatever the level of pronunciation or fluency. Mean scores were also affected by the type of assessor: whether or not native speaker, and whether or not trained oral examiners.

The English language as an international language has become a key element of communication in the international trade of products and services of all types. This is because all small, medium and large companies are facing an increasingly globalized world with all the competition that this involves both in the domestic and export market. While quality of the product or service remains a key factor, the ability to communicate in a globalised world can mean the difference between struggling to survive and expanding. In particular, the use of English in the Apulia region is of paramount importance for economic development, especially in the markets for traditional agro-food products (e.g. wine, olive oil or dairy products) and for attracting tourists on the national, European and extra-European levels: areas where English has almost become a second language. In this chapter, we will examine how ELF is used in conjunction with the more traditional English as a native language (ENL) in marketing, focusing on a case study of the scope of wine descriptions produced by two well-known Apulian wine producers. Before reporting on our analysis, we will briefly discuss Christiansen’s (2016) typology of the various forms of English used in international business circles and discuss the general factors that are to be considered before adopting one type of English rather than another in the context of various international marketing.

In the teaching and testing of English to speakers of other languages, native speaker pronunciation has traditionally been considered as a suitable model for ELF students. In recent years, this view has been challenged and it has been argued that a core approach is more appropriate given English’s status as an international language (Jenkins 1998, 2000. 2002, 2007). Jenkins’ concept of LFC (Lingua Franca Core) rests on mutual intelligibility for non-native speakers as opposed to intelligibility for some hypothetical native speaker of so-called standard variety. This assumes a common ground of certain features taken from varieties of ELF but also raises the interesting question of what precise part is played by features of the L1 of each participant in the discourse plays: whether they contribute or ‘interfere’ with the process, and equally important what ELF speakers’ attitudes are to such NNS pronunciations in particular towards that of their own L1. In this paper, we conduct a small-scale quantitative analysis based a questionnaire-based survey of 174 learners of English of various L1 (mainly Albanian, German and Italian) and two separate comparison groups made up of English language teachers who are asked to assess different extracts of unidentified subjects both native speaker (NS) and not (NNS) speaking English, as regards level of intelligibility, pronunciation and fluency (accepting that this latter is largely an intuitive concept that defies a simple objective definition.) The data from the control groups was collected as part of another research project (see Christiansen 2012, this volume). The object of the questionnaire is to identify which samples of English, questionnaire respondents find easier to understand and how far familiarity (e.g. pronunciation influenced by shared L1) affects their perceptions.

Blood, the substance and the concept, has long been accorded special significance in both religion (see the different Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions relating to the status of blood and hence how it may be treated or consumed / or not) and in medical science (see Galen, of Pergamon, the Greek Physician, who saw it as the link between body and soul). Consequently, the term ‘blood’ has acquired a series of complex metaphorical meanings in many languages and has come to carry a great deal of “cultural baggage” (Rutman and Rutman 1984) even when used in scientific discourse, post-Harvey. In this study we examine how it is used in the works of Edith Durham (1863-1944), the anthropologist famous for her works on the inhabitants of the Balkans and northern Albania and their traditions (a complex patchwork of different ethnic groups including followers of both Christianity and Islam, still adhering in some respects to much older beliefs). This paper will examine the part played by blood as a metaphor for kinship and descent in Durham’s description of Northern Albanian society in particular the importance of so-called blood relationships within the Kanun (or set of traditional laws, then largely unwritten). The method adopted will be to focus on the terms that Durham adopts and the experiential categories underlying them to expound their theory from the perspective of frame semantics (Fillmore 1976) and cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987/1991), from a corpus four of Durham’s works, and, secondly through comparison of these with others created from a parallel corpora of drawn from the popular magazine Scientific American (1881-1898), The King James Bible, and Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.

In this article we will discuss the phenomenon of metaphor and metonyms in lexis and expressions relating to body parts in the Albanian language as manifested in the Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit and in Old Geg Documents. Before doing so, it is expedient to briefly run over some of the key concepts behind metaphor, metonymy and embodiment so as to provide the theoretical background for the discussion which follows and also to make clear how complex and topical a theoretical area metaphors and metonymy are even in more frequently studied languages such as English and thus demonstrate how valuable studies such as this into a so-called lesser-spoken language may prove to be. As the title suggests, our aim is not to offer a definitive treatment of this area but rather to produce a preliminary study which will raise more questions than it will proverbially answer but which will, the authors hope, serve as a catalyst for other such studies not just in Albanian in as diverse languages, varieties and cultural contexts as possible.

Discrimination against Australian Indigenous groups, including the right to own traditional lands, has received increasing attention, culminating in the referenda campaigns for full citizenship rights in the 1960s, and the Mabo judgement (1992) and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations (2008). The issue is not just one of deliberate dispossession and subjugation but also the clash of two groups of cultures (on the one hand that of the British-led colonisation; on the other, those of the various Indigenous populations grouped together under the blanket term Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders). In this paper we will discuss how, regarding specifically property rights, the two sets of cultures employed not only different conceptual systems but different rituals, both linguistic and semiotic, for establishing and recording these rights. We will examine how Aborigine peoples, once subject to a culturally alien legal system which manifested itself in ways that were both linguistically and semiotically unrecognisable for them, came, at first tentatively, to use the system as a means for securing redress and partial compensation. Legal discourse is viewed as part of a wider set of options within the social semiotic concerned (Halliday 1978, Hodge and Kress 1988) where meaning at all levels is not stable or fixed but subject to Peircean infinite semiosis. To this end, we examine various petitions (reproduced in Attwood and Markus 1999), penned either by or on behalf of Aborigines, dating from the earliest periods of colonisation up to the 1970s, including the Yirrkala Bark Petition (1963), which sought to combine elements of both Aboriginal and Anglo-Australian legalistic semiotic / linguistic codes. The perspective is that of the function of such texts and their component parts seen as moves in the discourse within the cultural context, and on direct and indirect speech acts (Searle 1969, 1975).

One of the most interesting recent trends in the ESOL teaching has been the gradual move away from the idea that native speaker (NS) pronunciation represents the only model for learners (see Gimson, 1978 / Jenner, 1997). In ELF contexts, it has been suggested that a model of pronunciation based on an ill-defined concept of a “native speaker” should be replaced by a so-called core approach (Jenkins 1998, 2000, 2002, 2007). For this, Jenkins’ concept of LFC (Lingua Franca Core) is central, resting as it does on mutual intelligibility for the NNS actually engaged in the discourse as opposed to intelligibility for some hypothetical NS. In this paper, we will examine the way in which the LFC, as described by Jenkins, together with selected features of delivery, can be shown to affect intelligibility and thus constitute what a sample of learners regard as “good” pronunciation. We do this by reference to a questionnaire-based survey administered to 174 learners of different L1s (mainly Albanian, German and Italian) in which respondents have to rate for intelligibility recorded extracts of NS and NNS against a five-point Likert scale discussed in depth by Christiansen (2011a, 2011b). We compare the results of this survey with a detailed phonological analysis of the extracts, in an attempt to ascertain whether the presence of LFC features as opposed to features of so-called “standard” NS pronunciation corresponds to respondents’ assessment of intelligibility. It is found that, while the degree of LFC or standard NS pronunciation in a given extract is a reliable indicator of its general intelligibility to an L2 learner, other observable and measurable aspects of each extracts’ delivery (i.e. speed of delivery, length of pauses and average number of discernible words between pauses) need to be taken into account for a more precise analysis.

Darwin’s theory of evolution developed over several years and in various works, but most closely associated with the six editions of his On the Origin of the Species (1859-1872) attracted considerable controversy at the time of its circulation. Indeed, it continues to do so among members of the so-called creationism movement. At the heart of this debate is not just a purportedly irresolvable difference in world views between religion and science (see Ferngren 2002, Christiansen 2009) in particular the question of how and whether science and religion should be taught in schools, but also of how theories are presented to the non-scientific community and how the process of popularization contributes to reshaping the ideas of the original work (something inherent in the interactive nature of much popularization – see Christiansen forthcoming), sometimes exaggerating or obscuring certain aspects of theories and drawing different conclusions from those of the original author. Hunter’s A Civic Biology is interesting in this respect partly because it was at the centre of the famous and highly politicised Scopes (“Monkey”) Trial (1925), in which a high school teacher was prosecuted by the State of Tennessee for teaching evolution in a state-funded school. Although, in large degree, a mere pretext for a cause célèbre by which evolutionists sought to overturn the law question, the work from which Scopes taught presents an interesting example of text-books at the time and the way in which they dealt with Darwin’s complex theory. It is ironic that even among the scientific community at the time evolution still constituted an article of faith in that many of its central assumptions were not to be established empirically until advances in the new field of statistics (Fisher 1925), among other things, linking Darwin’s work to Mendel’s, finally provided the hard evidence necessary to lend it scientific credibility. This paper will investigate the language of Hunter’s discourse concentrating on speaker stance (Jaffe 2009) including the interpersonal function in particular the way in which Jakobson’s (1960) “conative,” “phatic,” and “emotive” functions are introduced into the presentation of Darwin’s theory. Comparison will be made with those works of Darwin’s dealing with evolution, in particular On the Origin of the Species. The aim will be to show how and where he injects his own stance into Darwin’s theories thereby illustrating not only the interactive aspect of popularisation but also its retrogressive aspect, namely the way that ideas may be distorted and misrepresented.

This paper aims to introduce classroom techniques that can be used to assist English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners in their comprehension and appreciation of the creative word in the form of contemporary pop songs and of texts written in non-contemporary varieties of English (i.e. Shakespeare's Early Modern English). Emphasis will be put on the basic yet often neglected (in the ESOL classroom) morpho-syntactical differences between standard and non-standard and between contemporary and older varieties of English. The juxtaposition of the language of a revered and legendary writer, such as Shakespeare, to that of supposedly more mundane and more transitory pop music is not merely a ploy to excite students’ curiosity; comparison of these two, at first sight, radically different genres, will also highlight the fact that both the Early Modern English of Shakespeare and colloquial varieties of English typical of pop songs today share two basic features: they both constitute expressions of creativity and, linguistically, they can all be treated as non-standard forms when compared to the contemporary standard British English or General American as taught to most ESOL students today.

Issues of property and land rights as applied to indigenous groups in Australia (Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders) have received increasing attention in recent years, especially since the landmark Mabo judgement (1992), by which the declaration of terra nullius, dating from the beginnings of British colonisation, was successfully challenged but not replaced by any clear single legal concept . The concept of property is the subject of much philosophical reflection (e.g. Cicero, Hobbes, Locke, Proudhon). Land rights in particular have been a point of political contention in most societies and the problem of property is even starker in countries like Australia where settlers arrived and constructed a new society and country in disregard of the existing inhabitants, their social structures and systems of law. As the Mabo judgement showed, where there is political will, legal systems derived from English law and which avail themselves of the concept of Common Law, can be made to accommodate the land rights of indigenous peoples, but inevitably only in terms of English legal concepts such as possession and title - the two key elements of property: Wendell Holmes Jr (1881). These may not be fully or even partially applicable to the indigenous groups’ concept of possession, if indeed they have such a thing. This is an issue which touches upon frame semantics (Fillmore 1976), cross-cultural communication (Pauwels 1992), and ultimately translation of genre (Gotti et al 2003, Bhatia 1997). In this paper we will examine this issue by looking at the lexis and syntactic structure of legal discourse found in a corpus of the Indigenous Law Bulletin (until 1997 called the Aboriginal Law Bulletin) from 1981-2007 from the perspective of cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987/1991).

Despite being of relative insignificance in terms of the development of standard British English, the nineteenth century was a period in which varieties of it were being exported around the world to lay the foundations for the various World Englishes that now exist. The case of Australian English is of special interest. Today, it is regarded as one of the major international varieties of English but, in the nineteenth century, it was confined to a relatively small – but rapidly growing – community of speakers isolated on a distant, and as regards fauna and indigenous population, largely alien continent. Notwithstanding the fact that the English-speaking community was not particularly homogenous, it is remarkable how as early as 1820, a distinct and largely endocentric (Semenets and Rusetskaya: 1991) variety of English, readily recognisable to outsiders as Australian, was established within the various settlements on the island-continent. What was then called “bush idiom”, became known elsewhere within the English-speaking world, and by 1898 had an academic reference work dedicated to it: Morris’s dictionary. This was due to its diffusion by, among other things, popular spoken verse and “bush ballads” (a compendium of subgenres such as convict songs, bushranger ballads and stockmen’s and drovers’ songs) and derived literature such as poetry, short stories and ballads by writers such as Henry Lawson and ‘Banjo’ Paterson, much of which published in influential magazines such as The Bulletin (1890 – 2008). This paper will attempt to map this evolution in lexis by looking at a corpus of nineteenth century spoken verse and bush ballads (some of which published only later – see Stewart and Keesing 1955) in order to identify patterns in the use of distinctively Australian English terms within it (see Delbridge et al. 1987; Horndadge 1986; McArthur, 1992, 1998, 2003; Ramson 1981). The focus will be firstly on the use of non-English native aboriginal terms (e.g. 'boomerang', ‘budgerigar’); secondly the appropriation of dialect words from principally Britain and Ireland (e.g. 'fossik', ‘larrikin’ or 'bloke'); and finally on the creation of original Australian terms whether adaptations of existing ones (e.g. 'creek', ‘bush’) or of completely new coinage (e.g. 'outback', ‘within cooey’).

In this research, we look at a corpus of approximately 2,000 messages posted on internet forums regarding requests for and offers of accommodation for international students in Italy. The approach will be largely quantitative (via a statistical analysis of the occurrence of relevant phenomena). We will examine the way ELF in this context is informed also by Italian, as a particular type of code mixing and switching as appropriate given the specific extra-linguistic context of students coming to Italy largely to learn about Italian art, culture, history and language. Such mixing and switching is found not only in the micro-aspects of the languages such as in names of places (proper nouns) and of culture-specific concepts, but also in longer discourse segments such as phatic expressions, for instance, salutations. We argue that the code switching, in particular, constitutes a deliberate strategy whereby speakers from expanding circle countries in particular would seem to be deliberately displaying affinity with Italian language and culture.

This paper looks at the way that language and content-oriented questions can be distinguished in multiple choice tests in the context of CLIL courses and to identify which factors, in particular linguistic competence and content knowledge, have greatest affect on each Our discussion will be centred on studies of quizzes assessing linguistic competence and knowledge of course content for students of two different academic disciplines taught in English. To do this, we set up two cases studies, the first looking at the results of self-access online tests taken by students on a an English for Specific Purposes course rather than a bona fide CLIL one. In the second case study, we examine the results of three specially designed paper-based multiple choice tests given to students on a CLIL course. The two teaching contexts and means of test delivery are different but the results are found to be similar in some profound respects, shedding vital light on the whole issue of how and by which precise factors student performance is affected in courses where language and content are taught and tested together.