ChangE 2013 focuses on English as a world language used daily by hundreds of millions of people from very different backgrounds. The position of English as a lingua franca in the present-day world means that it enters into constant contact with virtually every other major language in the world. This, in turn, leads to accelerated change and variation in English itself, manifest in several domains of its grammar and lexis.

These processes will be examined in light of recent advances made in four hitherto rather separate lines of research:

• contact linguistics
• typology
• English as a lingua franca (ELF)
• second-language acquisition (SLA)

Combining these approaches helps to describe and explain the ongoing changes and the emerging characteristics of Global English. A common methodological denominator in the talks will be corpus-based comparison between established, or 'standard', L1 varieties and their non-standard varieties, on the one hand, and these and the new L2 varieties of English, including lingua franca English, on the other.

Significance of the conference

The spread of English to virtually all parts of the world has brought along completely new challenges to the research into it. Instead of the traditional canons of English studies, a variety of approaches and methods is now required to describe and explain the linguistic, educational and other problems arising from the status of English as a world language.

ChangE 2013 serves this purpose by bringing together for the first time ever scholars representing some of the most important approaches to these problems. The conference highlights the need for a multidisciplinary and empirically sound approach to questions having to do with the rapidly changing nature of Global English and the role of variation and contacts therein.

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This page last updated: 6.5.2013