Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Introduction: Only connect! -- Section 1: Theoretical bearings -- Preamble -- Section 2: Linguistics and applied linguistics -- Preamble -- 1. Contextual meaning and the legacy of J. R. Firth -- 2. Linguistic creativity and Jakobson's poetic function -- 3. Applied linguistics, interdisciplinarity and disparate realities -- 4. On the applicability of empirical findings -- Section 3: The analysis and interpretation of language use -- Preamble -- 5. The pretext of interpretation -- 6. Interpersonal positioning and genre conventions -- 7. "So the meaning escapes". On literature and the representation of linguistic realities -- 8. Critical practices: On representation and the interpretation of text -- 9. The novel features of text. Corpus analysis and stylistics -- 10. The unrecoverable context -- 11. Macbeth and the third murderer. An exercise in forensic stylistics -- Section 4: English as a lingua franca -- Preamble -- 12. ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts -- 13. ELF and the pragmatics of language variation -- 14. ELF, adaptive variability and virtual language -- 15. The cultural and creative use of English as a lingua franca -- 16. Creative incompetence -- Section 5: Linguistics in language learning and teaching -- Preamble -- 17. The role of translation in language learning and teaching -- 18. Bilingual competence and lingual capability -- 19. Competence and capability: rethinking the subject English -- 20. Reversions -- References -- Name Index -- Subject Index