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The 10th Conference of The International Association of World Englishes, Syracuse University, New York, U.S.A., 16–18 July 2004

This was the tenth conference of the International Association of World Englishes (IAWE) and was extremely well organised by Tej Bhatia and his team. While the IAWE conferences may appear to have a relatively short history – the first IAWE was held in 1992 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – the origins of the association really stem from two conferences held in 1978, the first at the East-West Centre at the University of Hawaii and the second at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The resulting publications of those two conferences edited by the respective conference Chairs, Larry Smith and Braj Kachru (Smith 1981; Kachru 1982) provided the intellectual stimulus for the later formation of the IAWE. Out of the ten IAWE conferences held to date, three have been held in Asia, including two in Japan (Nagoya 1993 and Tsukubua 1998). Singapore hosted the conference in 1996. The keynote speakers at the 10th conference were Salikoko Mufwene of the University of Chicago and Yasukata Yano from Waseda University. In addition, James Alatis of Georgetown University gave the Distinguished Speaker Lecture in which he described the history of TESOL and its acronym and considered whether TESOL needs to find a new name. He concluded with a plea that organisations such as IAWE and TESOL work together collaboratively. In his extremely stimulating and entertaining keynote, Professor Mufwene argued that the role of English depends on whether the English developed in a settlement or exploitation colony. In settlement colonies – Australia is an example – English has developed as a vernacular and has been a danger to indigenous languages. In exploitation colonies – Malaysia is an example – English has emerged as a lingua franca. This distinction between English as a vernacular and English as a lingua franca needs to be clarified. A vernacular competes with other vernaculars, whereas a lingua franca competes with other lingua francas. It is extremely unlikely, therefore, that we shall end up with an “English-only-Europe” or an “English-onlyAsia”. Kachru’s term “World Englishes” represents an attempt to capture this pluralism and diversity evident among the world’s Englishes. The terms English as an International Language or World English, on the other hand, smack too much of a