ABSTRACT
The global spread of English has shaped, and continues to shape, how scholars approach the study of languages. Notions of what a speaker of English looks and sounds like, and what nations and ethnicities are associated with the language, are being challenged. New communicative contexts have emerged that require, or are mediated through, English; individuals from distinct, and often geographically dispersed, speech communities are communicating in English more now than ever before. Such issues and phenomena complicate previously held assumptions and theoretical constructs within sociolinguistic scholarship, including global and English as a lingua franca (ELF) research.
