John C. Maher is Professor of Linguistics at International Christian University, Tokyo, specializing in sociolinguistics. He has previously held positions at the University of Edinburgh, St. Antony's College, Oxford, and De La Salle University, Manila. His many publications in both English and Japanese include Introducing Chomsky (Multilingual Matters, 1995), and Multilingualism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017) and, as co-editor with Kyoko Yashiro, Multilingual Japan (Multilingual Matters, 1995). He is a founding member of the Japan Association of the Sociolinguistic Sciences.