This study examines how university students across six Gulf countries—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—position themselves in relation to English as a global language and how English-medium instruction shapes their cultural and linguistic identities. Drawing on positioning theory, the research examines students’ everyday language use and their perceptions of English's role in education and society. Data were collected through questionnaires. The findings reveal a state of strategic dualism, in which students manage individual agency by strictly separating their linguistic worlds. While English use is dominant in education, it drops sharply at home. Crucially, the results show that higher English proficiency actually reduces cultural anxiety, challenging the narrative that English always threatens identity. Additionally, the findings reveal that, although British English continues to influence education systems due to historical and governmental ties, American English is increasingly preferred by students, reflecting globalisation, media exposure and international academic aspirations. The study emphasises the ongoing negotiation of linguistic identity in the Gulf, where English serves both as a tool for opportunity and as a marker of social positioning within rapidly evolving educational contexts.

In this study, the role French maintains in education is assessed across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Statistics on the numbers of L1 users, those who have French as an additional language, as well as other demographic data, are used to chart trends in acquisition patterns across these three regions. The decline in the learning of traditional additional languages is juxtaposed with Englishization. What languages are utilized in school as the language of instruction, as well as what foreign languages are promoted in educational systems, has a profound impact on patterns of second-language acquisition. Here, in all three regions, English is gaining ground at the expense of other languages in primary and secondary school, as well as in higher education, and one result of this historic shift in the acquisition of additional languages is that English is now significantly reducing the importance of French in Francophone Africa.

This study examines how novice female English language teachers who are LX (non-native) speakers construct their professional identities within the context of a Saudi Arabian university. The dichotomy of the ‘native’ and ‘LX practitioner’, which is often power-driven rather than skill-based, persistently leads to the marginalization of teachers who are LX speakers of English. Drawing on the narratives of four female instructors, this qualitative study explores how these teachers navigate institutional exclusion and position themselves within their professional communities. Framed by the concept of individual agency management, the findings reveal how participants employ various forms of agency – resistance, participation, and refusal – to assert and sustain a positive self-image. Despite feeling disempowered by the context, the participants each maintained a strong self-image as English teachers, which stems from various socio-cultural factors.

As a result of globalization and the belief that proficiency in English is essential for progress, English as the medium of instruction (EMI) has become prevalent in the Gulf states. While there is little debate over the advantages, recent research indicates that allowing English to dominate tertiary education can have adverse outcomes. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which adopted EMI earlier than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), has experienced unfavorable consequences. A comparative analysis of the KSA and the UAE indicates that longer exposure to EMI is linked to heightened concerns about domain loss in the Arabic language, in Arab identity, and in learning outcomes. This study presents and analyzes data to assess the extent to which EMI influences students’ ability to acquire subject knowledge. Employing a rhizomatic and complex theory framework for analysis, the findings indicate that stakeholders should critically examine their perceptions and assumptions regarding EMI.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has recently made significant changes to its tertiary education programs, aligning itself with other nations in the Middle East and North Africa by adopting the practice of English Medium Instruction (EMI). However, EMI is not without drawbacks. In the UAE and Qatar, for example, researchers have reported on the potential adverse consequences of the policy. This study seeks to explore KSA university students’ and instructors’ attitudes toward EMI, with a significant focus on broader social and cultural perceptions, while also addressing pedagogical issues. This approach contrasts with the predominant focus in the existing literature, which primarily emphasizes pedagogical aspects. A mixed-method approach is utilized in which students were surveyed quantitatively, and instructors were interviewed. The study does not reveal any evidence of broader social and cultural concerns such as those reported elsewhere; however, the findings do indicate student resistance to a monolingual approach, whether English or Arabic. Thus, by taking into consideration the findings presented here and in other studies, in conjunction with relevant theoretical suppositions, this study substantiates the benefits of a mixed-medium approach combining English and Arabic.

This research bibliography lists some of the most important scholarly work on Englishes in mainland Europe and on English in the European Union. The bibliography comprises books, journal articles, book chapters, and doctoral dissertations, concerned with pan-European issues. It is intended that this bibliography will provide a useful starting point for continuing research on this topic for the years to come.

This article addresses, from an applied linguistics perspective, the position English maintains among the myriad of languages spoken in the European Union (EU). The linguistic make-up of EU society, as well as the language policy of the Union, is scrutinised. The role English is playing in European unification is also important for the discussion, as is the call for a re-evaluation of the norms deployed in English language teaching. The linguistic nativisation currently taking place in mainland Europe, which indicates that English is functioning more as an Outer Circle rather than as an Expanding Circle language, is juxtaposed with these developments.

The European Union, with slightly >1% of the population having English as a mother tongue, is experiencing a surge in the importance of English as an additional language among its citizenries. This has economic, pedagogical, political as well as sociocultural implications. In this special issue on Europe, with reporting on the current state of the English language in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden, as well as Switzerland, which is not an EU member, there is deliberation on differing national approaches to the dissemination of English. The issue also includes a discussion of Europe with reference to applied linguistics and European identity. What is commonly shared among all the nations of Europe, and reported on in these articles, is that the acquisition and use of English across numerous domains continues to expand throughout the whole of the European Union.

In the three years and seven months between the referendum on 23 June 2016 and 31 January 2020, when the UK officially left the European Union, there was much speculation over what status English would have in the EU after the withdrawal of the UK. It is now apparent that English has continued to flourish. This is supported by statistics for Member States which chart the extent to which English is a school subject. Well over 95% of the children in the EU are taught English as a mandatory subject. Official EU figures also show that 38% of the population is proficient in English as a second language, three times more than both French and German (Special Eurobarometer 386: Europeans and their Languages, 2012). Moreover, although some, such as Danuta Hübner, EMP, wanted to question whether or not English could maintain its status as an official language in the EU, it is now apparent that it will not be possible to remove English in this respect (with changes requiring a unanimous vote in the Council, which Ireland has said it will not support [European Commission, 2016]), (The Guardian 27 December 2019). English has also retained its position as one of the three ‘procedural’ or ‘working languages’ alongside French and German. This has taken place despite the fact that without the UK, no Member State has English as its official EU language, and only approximately one percent of EU citizens have English as a mother tongue.