ABSTRACT
The last few decades have witnessed significant changes in the users and uses of English as an international language (EIL) (McKay, 2002, this volume; Schneider, 2011). One change, grand in scale and far-reaching in consequence, is that the numbers of learners and users of English have risen staggeringly (Crystal, 2003). According to a recent estimate cited in Schneider (2011, p. 2), there are close to 2 billion English speakers today. Notably, the populations of native speakers (NS) of English in the Inner-Circle countries (see B. Kachru, 1986) are not only surpassed in number by non-native speakers (NNS) of English in the Outer-Circle countries but also far outnumbered by users of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the Expanding-Circle countries (Canagarajah, 2007; Crystal, 2003). Along with the geographical and demographical spread and diffusion of English at global and local levels, the domains of use have also expanded tremendously for English such that it is the de facto language for communication among people from different language backgrounds in a growing variety of political, economic, cultural, educational, intellectual, and social areas (Y. Kachru, 2011; McKay & Bokhorst-Heng, 2008; Murata & Jenkins, 2009; Svartvik & Leech, 2006).
