Agnieszka Stępkowska received her PhD from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, in 2004. She is a lecturer at the School of English, the University of Social Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests focus on translation studies, multilingualism and the sociology of language. She has published a book on English loanwords in Polish naval vocabulary and numerous papers on various topics.

• Contents: English in Rivalry – The Nature of a Dominant Language – Standard and Varieties – No-man’s-Language – Linguistic Pragmatism – Multilingual Perspective of Language Contact – Macro-sociolinguistic Aspects of Contact Linguistics – Mechanisms of Language Change – The Ecology of Languages – The Quality of Swiss-style Diversity – English in Switzerland – Switzerland: a Paradigmatic View – Language Policy and Protection – Schooling – Research: the Canton of Zurich – Towards a Linguistic Paradigm.