The focus of this volume in our ongoing series has shifted from the technological advances that were the topic of numerous papers in the previous book to more rigorous and empirical research, especially in the linguistics and methodology section. While the former is represented by the majority of papers, methodology still manages to surprise with new findings in often-overlooked areas, such as how to address students with impairments in English Language Teaching (ELT), the use of gesture, and the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The linguistics section starts out with a look at academic English as a lingua franca (ELF) practices, native and non-native English varieties and ELT, pragmatic markers and hedging, and corpora. The compact literary section correlates with the diversity inherent in the field and concerns ethnic writing, indigenous storytelling, animality and elaborations on postmodernist fiction.

As such, this collection of research papers will bring topics and approaches to the attention of a wide spectrum of practitioners as both an impetus and inspiration.