A survey with large samples trying to find out whether there is a difference in the languages chosen in store signs in a larger city and those in a provincial town, gathering a ‘baseline’ sample in Great Britain in order to see whether shop-front advertising for native speakers of English also draws on foreign languages.

A report on the salient role of English in Japan's complex commercial signs. A 1989–1990 study by the National Language Research Institute found that loanwords comprise nearly 10% of Japanese language in current use, and most of these loanwords are from English. Loanword dictionary entries continue to grow: the latest katakana dictionary published by Sanseido (2000) contains 52,500 foreign word entries.

Some innovative quotative usage among young people in London. In this article, Levey looks at its use in a south-eastern variety of English, specifically in narratives of personal experience by primary-school children in an outer London borough.

Notes on the compilation of a classic dictionary of law. There are essentially five big questions for the writer of a modern law dictionary – and they're pretty much the same questions faced by lexicographers of old, from Rastell to Jacob to Bouvier to Black, and these are discussed.

A discussion of the difficulties that beset teaching the history of the English language in American universities.

Some thoughts on a complex pronoun. Some expressions seem so familiar to us that we do not bother to reflect on the meanings they convey. We can be surprised to learn that in some languages, like Malay, it is necessary to distinguish between we referring to the speaker and the interlocutor (kita) and we referring to the speaker and someone other than the interlocutor (kami). Both possibilities are covered by the English we.

A discussion of the kinds of English emerging in the world at large and in the European Union. In recent years, the world's Anglophone media, in the company of a range of other observers, have routinely been calling English ‘the world's lingua franca’. As a result, the phrase is now something of a cliché. We're all ‘global’ now, and need to use the first truly universal language, whether we are business people, politicians, teachers, tourists, or terrorists.

Most disciplines seem to have their “K factors”, though linguistics has so far been an exception. Now a language-related K factor has surfaced, kindled by Italian text messages and the influence of English.

On the analogy of racism and sexism, the term speciesism has been coined to highlight and protest against an exploitative relationship between humankind and the other living creatures of this planet.

The renowned American linguist and lexicographer Allen Walker Read, who was born on June 2, 1906, died in October 2002. A universally respected academic lexicographer, he was impressive in his display of knowledge and his readiness to build bridges between the United Kingdom and the United States.