In contrast to the rest of the book, this chapter discusses not what to say in and how to speak English but rather what is not socially acceptable to speak about in North American culture: from offensive language and profanity to sensitive topics such as sex and politics. These taboo subjects differ by culture, and EFL speakers who come from cultures that are more direct might find themselves saying something inappropriate – just as chatbots can sometimes generate offensive content. The developers of chatbots like ChatGPT have programmed filters to prevent them from generating offensive text. Those filters are based on the norms of the developers themselves, most of whom are based in North America, and this can make a chatbot’s refusal to answer some questions seem excessively careful through the lens of other cultures.

Picture, for a moment, enlisting the help of automatic translation when you seek medical attention in a foreign country and need to explain, in no uncertain terms, where you experience pain and in what intensity. I have experienced this in my first year in the US after moving there from Israel. Now consider that I’m not only a user of language technologies but also a researcher working on these technologies. As such, I’m also aware of their limitations. For example, I know that translation systems may translate figurative expressions literally, or that certain inputs can make them generate incorrect “translations” in the form of a religious text.

Although the internet has removed geographical boundaries, transforming the world into a global village, English is still the most dominant language online. New forms of online communication such as emoji and memes have become an integral part of internet language. While it’s tempting to think of such visual communication formats as removing the cultural barriers – after all, emoji appear like a universal alphabet – their interpretation may rely on cultural references.

Chapter 1 establishes the primary intrigue surrounding professional speechwriters and other sorts of invisibilized language workers: namely, the complication of an author who is never animator nor principal of their labor (Goffman 1981). Here Mapes also lays out the theoretical cornerstones of her research: language in institutional and professional contexts; language work and wordsmiths; metadiscourse; and reflexivity and semiotic ideologies. This framework serves to address not only the ways in which workplace communication both establishes and contests particular communities of practice but also how larger issues related to metalinguistic awareness and political economy are implicated in these processes. Next, Mapes briefly maps the history of speechwriting as well as the relatively scant scholarly engagement with practitioners. She then turns to the specifics of her project, documenting the details of her data collection, method, and analytical process. The chapter concludes with an overview of the rest of the book, as well as an explanation of the three primary rhetorical strategies (invisibility, craft, and virtue) which arise in speechwriters’ metadiscursive accounts of their work.

This article addresses ground-breaking aspects of the Quechua Innovation and Teaching Initiative (QINTI). QINTI’s projects include a curricular outline for two semesters of beginning Quechua and audio-recorded chapter dialogues for an OER textbook, titled Ayni. Ayni expands the cultural scope of the traditional conception of Quechua speakers and integrates three mutually intelligible Quechua varieties: Ayacucho (Chanka), Bolivian (Cochabamba), and Cuzco-Collao. Pedagogical goals in developing the dialogues included maintaining comprehensible input, mutual intelligibility, and cultural authenticity. QINTI’s creation of Ayni serves as a model among the Indigenous languages of the Americas in fostering collaboration and creating instructional resources to bolster language revitalisation.

Emigration has been and still is an essential part of Polish experience. The country’s turbulent history has often forced Poles out of their homeland. Yet whenever or wherever they went, they established communities which strived to preserve their culture and, above all, to maintain their language. This chapter provides the main characteristics and history of the Polish diaspora. It also describes Polish ethnic institutions established to help new generations uphold the heritage language while bringing to discussion their forms and organisation. It also talks about heritage returnees, whose struggle with language in Polish schools has received little attention.

The chapter presents an overview of English Medium Instruction (EMI) at Swiss universities. It describes historical and political aspects relating to languages in Switzerland. This entails the implications for the multilingual policy, language law, federalism, and the role of English in higher education. The nation’s model of communication informed by the partner-language model has evolved into multilingualism with English. Many university courses in Switzerland are offered in English depending on the research done in a given area. The analysis focuses on the data collected from the websites of major Swiss universities with regard to the EMI trends.

This chapter gives a practical description of a CLIL vector model developed in Finland and Mexico for adolescent language learning students in Mexican public education (2017–2021). The model enabled two simultaneous interlinked learning experiences in which language teachers enable the learning of content through English, and teachers of other subjects enable the learning of English through content. Although the approach can be used for the learning of any additionallanguage, this chapter describes a case study in which the model was applied with the primary objective of raising levels of English language competences of some 1,500 students aged 15–18 years.

This chapter focuses on heritage language education in major English-speaking Chinese diasporic communities. The chapter starts with a brief overview of the Chinese diasporic communities across different geopolitical contexts. It is followed by a discussion of the benefits of HLs and the impact of language hierarchies on language development. It then provides a discussion of HL development in the home and its key research contributions in the field. The discussion is devoted to a critical review of HL language schools and the development of HL learners’ identity and perceptions of their multilingual selves. In the last section, the implications of HL education are outlined and suggestions for future research are indicated.

Some preliminary contextual, conceptual, and terminological remarks on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) create the necessary foundation for a multi-perspective evaluation of CLIL-related benefits for general English as a Foreign Language (EFL) proficiency. Theoretical perspectives suggest that CLIL has great potential to enhance students‘ language competencies. Corresponding empirical studies vary in explanatory power and show mixed results: Some indicate improvements, especially in receptive skills, vocabulary, and grammar, while others find limited effects. The chapter highlights that CLIL (research) is complex and challenging; contexts differ. It appears plausible that potential benefits not always materialise in CLIL classes.