The Editors: Markus Bieswanger is Assistant Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Flensburg (Germany).Heiko Motschenbacher is a Research Fellow in the Department of English Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt am Main (Germany).Susanne Mühleisen is Chair of English Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth (Germany).

• Contents: Markus Bieswanger/Heiko Motschenbacher/Susanne Mühleisen: Language in its socio-cultural context: New explorations in gendered, global and media uses – Anne Pauwels: Socially motivated language reform in a global lingua franca: The case of gender reform in English – Heiko Motschenbacher: Female-as-norm (FAN): A typology of female and feminine generics – Friederike Braun/Geoffrey Haig: When are German ‘girls’ feminine? How the semantics of age influences the grammar of gender agreement – Janet Holmes: Gender, leadership and discourse in New Zealand workplaces – Stephanie Schnurr: ‘Decision made – let’s move on’ – Negotiating gender and profes-sional identity in Hong Kong workplaces – Rita Kupetz/Maxi Kupetz: Approaches to the analysis of interaction in the English language classroom and implications for teacher education – Markus Bieswanger: Gendered language use in computer-mediated communication: Typography in text messaging – Britta Schneider: Deconstructing national identity – What does it mean for language rights? – Rainer Schulze: «In retrospect, I was shocked, dazed, confused and not able to cope»: on a selected ‘frozen’ linguistic pattern as a reflection of cultural collective cognition – Bettina Migge: Variation and change in a Creole community: An assessment of social and linguistic processes – Susanne Mühleisen: Variation and change in Caribbean Creole pronominal systems: What does allyuh mean?