English in Bangladesh: A Post-Colonial Sociolinguistic Observation

English in Argentina: a sociolinguistic profile

A Sociolinguistic Study of English Taboo Language

In every society there are things which are believed to be not appropriate if spoken on public occasions. A large number of words are therefore taken as silly, vulgar or obscene when used in communication. These words are “taboos”. This paper investigates all the major varieties of English taboo, i.e., bodily excretions, death and disease, sex, four-letter words, privacy and discriminatory lang...

Hong Kong English: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives

Hong Kong English (HKE) has been the subject of a growing body of research over the last few decades. This article presents an overview of research into HKE from both linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. The first section reviews the linguistic features of HKE at phonological, grammatical and lexical levels as documented in the literature. In the second section of the article, the devel...

(Post)Colonial Diplomacy in Canada

Although the colonial ideology often masks the fact, diplomacy has been a major part of the colonial encounter. In Canada, diplomacy in its many guises has been carried out between the colonizing Europeans and EuroCanadians since first contact between them. This diplomacy can be immediately broken up into at least two distinct periods: pre-colonial and colonial diplomacy. The first is marked by...

Medium of Instruction in Secondary Education in Post-Colonial Hong Kong: Why Chinese? Why English?

In 1997, the majority of secondary schools in Hong Kong changed their medium of instruction from English to Chinese (Cantonese) due to a mandatory policy of the government. This paper reports on a case study on this change of medium of instruction policy by synthesizing related studies and reports. The analysis intends to explain why English is preferred as the medium of instruction for seconda...