Presidential Address Abstract: Prof. Dr. Christian Mair

The contemporary “English Language Complex” (McArthur 2003, Mesthrie & Bhatt 2008), result of the global spread and increasing internal diversification of the English language over the past several centuries, has become a focus of research not only in linguistics, but also – to mention the most important voices in this cross-disciplinary dialogue – in literary and cultural studies, history, political science, sociology, economics, and information science. In the frame of a conference organised around the motif of “Building Bridges,” I will take the Presidential Address as an opportunity to explore the place of the Linguistics of English within the wider field of interdisciplinary English Language Studies (Adams & Curzan 2011). The benefits of closer cooperation between linguistics and these other fields are mutual. Descriptive linguistic research on English has potential for application which can be developed systematically through cooperation across disciplinary boundaries, and impulses from neighbouring fields will help set the research agenda for the English Linguistics of the future.

References

Adams, Michael, and Anne Curzan. 2011. Contours of English Language Studies. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.

McArthur, Tom. 2003. "World English, Euro-English, Nordic English". English Today 19 (1): 54-58.

Mesthrie, Rajend, and Rakesh M. Bhatt. 2008. World Englishes: The Study of New Varieties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Keywords: linguistics, interdisciplinary research on English