The Editors: Anna Duszak is Professor of Linguistics at Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. She has published in the area of discourse analysis, pragmatics, crosscultural communication and critical discourse analysis. Recently she co-edited with Guiseppina Cortese a volume on Identity, community, discourse: English in intercultural settings (Peter Lang, 2005).Urszula Okulska is Assistant Professor at Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. She has published on language change, English specialized genres, political discourse and linguistic corpora. She is the author of Gender and the formation of Modern Standard English. A socio-historical corpus study with Early Modern English in focus (Peter Lang, 2006). Anna Duszak and Urszula Okulska co-edited the volume Speaking from the margin. Global English from a European perspective (2004), published in the same series of Polish Studies in English Language and Literature, by Peter Lang.

• Contents: Anna Duszak/Urszula Okulska: Vices of metalinguistic communication: Problems and perspectives – Heinz Vater: Autonomy and interdisciplinarity in different areas of linguistics – Zdzisław Wąsik: Understanding the existence modes of language and the division of linguistic labor – Anna Siewierska: Linguistic typology: Where functionalism and formalism almost meet – Anatolij Dorodnych: Newer is better? Language monopoly as a metalinguistic problem – Jan Piotrowski: Building methodological bridges: On the empiricity of linguistic theories – Maria Kasperkiewicz: Interdisciplinarity in historical linguistics. A panchronic generative analysis of language change – Robert de Beaugrande: Metalinguistic discourse and the dilemma of writing versus speech – Stephen Cowley/Nigel Love: Language and cognition, or, How to avoid the conduit metaphor – Przemysław Żywiczyński: Linguistic axiology and ethology of speaking: A case for methodological eclecticism – Małgorzata Sokół: Genre analysis and digital communication: New approaches to genre theory – Urszula Okulska: Diachronic corpus research: Towards a holistic reconstruction of the spoken modality of English – Tomasz Krzeszowski: Barriers in communication – Maurizio Gotti: Metalinguistic considerations in 17th-century specialized discourse – Anna Duszak: ‘Metalanguageing’ and styling in academic communication – Tomasz Fojt: Figurative language analysis: A case for interdisciplinarity – Irina Sklema-Litwin: Impressionistic labelling in voice quality studies – Mirosława Podhajecka: Language contact: Problems of metalinguistic description – Norman Fairclough: Building bridges and overcoming barriers? Discourse analysis as transdisciplinary research – Piotr Cap: Extending the boundaries of (persuasive) discourse analysis: A Cognitive Grammar contribution – Daniela Wawra: Language and peacock tails: The evolution of language by sexual selection – Dilek Kantar/Yeşim Aksan: A linguistic cross between form and content in fiction – Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska: Bridging an uncommon past with a common future? Reconciling literary and linguistic critical analyses of poetic texts on the example of Allen Ginsberg’s «Howl».