The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies, which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics. For further publications in English linguistics see also our Dialects of English book series. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher.

This book describes how the island of Malta became a protectorate of the British Crown during the wars against Napoleon after the failures of the Knights of Saint John, republican France, the Two Sicilies, and finally imperial Russia to fill the role of its best defender. Author Desmond Gregory also explains why most, though not all, Maltese people welcomed the protection of Britain, the supreme naval power in the Mediterranean after the battle of Aboukir Bay.

The present volume contains general essays on: the relevance of ‘Commonwealth’ literature; the treatment of Dalits in literature and culture; the teaching of African literature in the UK; ‘sharing places’ and Drum magazine in South Africa; black British book covers as primers for cultural contact; Christianity, imperialism, and conversion; Orang Pendek and Papuans in colonial Indonesia; Carnival and drama in the anglophone Caribbean; issues of choice between the Maltese language and Its Others; and patterns of interaction between married couples in Malta. As well as these, there are essays providing close readings of works by the following authors: Chinua Achebe, André Aciman, Diran Adebayo, Monica Ali, Edward Atiyah, Margaret Atwood, Murray Bail, Peter Carey, Amit Chaudhuri, Austin Clarke, Sara Jeannette Duncan, Amitav Ghosh, Nadine Gordimer, Antjie Krog, Hanif Kureishi, Naguib Mahfouz, David Malouf, V.S. Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje, Tayeb Salih, Zadie Smith, Ahdaf Soueif, Yvonne Vera. Contributors: Jogamaya Bayer, Katrin Berndt, Sabrina Brancato, Monica Bungaro, Judith Lütge Coulli, Robert Cribb, Natasha Distiller, Evelyne Hanquart–Turner, Marie Herbillon, Tuomas Huttunen, Gen’ichiro Itakura, Jacqueline Jondot, Karen King–Aribisala, Ursula Kluwick, Dorothy Lane, Ben Lebdai, Lourdes López–Ropero, Amin Malak, Daniel Massa, Concepción Mengibar–Rico, Susanne Reichl, Brigitte Scheer–Schaezler, Lydia Sciriha, Jamie S. Scott, Andrea Strolz, Peter O. Stummer, Cynthia vanden Driesen, Clare Thake Vassallo.

The seventeen chapters brought together in this volume represent a selection of papers presented at the International Conference on Bilingualism held in March 2015 at the University of Malta’s Valletta campus. The multifaceted nature of the conference is evident in the diverse viewpoints from a range of authors who analyse aspects of the linguistic situations in Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Macau, Malta, Poland, Romania, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom. The volume comprises chapters on Code-Switching, Linguistic Landscape, Bilingualism, Culture and Identity, Language Policy, Bilingual Education, and Trilingualism. This book is a valuable resource not only for students and scholars, but also for language teachers interested in the variegated nature of bilingualism in various countries in Europe, Asia, and South America.

The History of the English Language is a traditional course whose instructors are tasked with balancing various institutional, curricular, and student needs. Additionally, the course's prodigious subject poses challenges for new as well as veteran instructors. It encompasses a broad chronological, geographic, and disciplinary scope and, in the twenty-first-century classroom, has come to account for English's transformative relationship with the internet and social media. In Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language, experienced instructors explain the influences and ingenuity behind their successful teaching practices.

The purpose of this volume is to present a snapshot of the state of the art of research on the languages of the Maltese islands, which include spoken Maltese, Maltese English and Maltese Sign Language. Malta is a tiny, but densely populated country, with over 422,000 inhabitants spread over only 316 square kilometers. It is a bilingual country, with Maltese and English enjoying the status of official languages. Maltese is a descendant of Arabic, but due to the history of the island, it has borrowed extensively from Sicilian, Italian and English. Furthermore, local dialects still coexist alongside the official standard language. The status of English as a second language dates back to British colonial rule, and just as in other former British colonies, a characteristic Maltese variety of English has developed. To these languages must be added Maltese Sign Language, which is the language of the Maltese Deaf community. This was recently recognised as Malta’s third official language by an act of Parliament in 2016. While a volume such as the present one can hardly do justice to all aspects of a diverse and complex linguistic situation, even in a small community like that of Malta, our aim in editing this book was to shed light on the main strands of research being undertaken in the Maltese linguistic context. Six of the contributions in this book focus on Maltese and explore a broad range of topics including: historical changes in the Maltese sound system; syllabification strategies; the interaction of prosody and gesture; the constraints regulating /t/-insertion; the productivity of derivational suffixes; and raising phenomena. The study of Maltese English, especially with the purpose of establishing the defining characteristics of this variety of English, is a relatively new area of research. Three of the papers in this volume deal with Maltese English, which is explored from the different perspectives of rhythm, the syntax of nominal phrases, and lexical choice. The last contribution discusses the way in which Maltese Sign Language (LSM) has evolved alongside developments in LSM research. In summary, we believe the present volume has the potential to present a unique snapshot of a complex linguistic situation in a geographically restricted area. Given the nature and range of topics proposed, the volume will likely be of interest to researchers in both theoretical and comparative linguistics, as well as those working with experimental and corpus-based methodologies. Our hope is that the studies presented here will also serve to pave the way for further research on the languages of Malta, encouraging researchers to also take new directions, including the exploration of variation and sociolinguistic factors which, while often raised as explanatory constructs in the papers presented here, remain under-researched.