ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a number of key concepts in specialised language teaching and research, either emerging or established. It explores pedagogic practices both as general principles and what happens in a variety of classroom situations. The book looks at the linguistic consequences of the complex language contact resulting from the use of English as a lingua franca, to ask how English is both influencing and being influenced by other languages. It argues that as academics make use of their varying repertoires of English the language becomes more variable at the macro level, as well as both more complex and simpler in different ways. The book shows how socialisation and lack of cultural capital combine to diminish practitioners’ contributions to the university and how they might affect a shift in identity and agency through developing their own scholarship and socialisation.
