Still in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic at the time of writing in early May, it is not easy to find a silver lining for this Editorial, or, indeed, to identify some pressing issue in the field of sociolinguistics that does not pale in comparison to the challenges the world is now facing. Offices are closed, restaurants and bars are going bankrupt, travel agencies, event halls, and airlines have no customers, subways are empty, governments are tripping over their own bureaucratic inertia, and we are told to stay at home and avoid direct human contact at all costs. Is it possible that the huge amount of intercultural contact and crossing/negotiating of languages that goes hand in hand with globalization and cosmopolitanism will come to a standstill, and there will be less need for our Englishes in the future? Will I have to do my Jung Dayeon ‘figurobics’ alone in the house forever? I think this will not be the case, but the style of human interaction will be different, situated in different contexts and locales. As a colleague in Boston said to me 15 years ago, capitalistic social democracy created global warming, and it is only via the same system that we can come upwith a solution. Similarly, we see the private world, and certain enlightened organizations, making rapid adjustments to our new situation. Infectious disease experts in a wide host of countries are in close communication, universities and their faculty members are scrambling to switch to online learning via video-conferencing platforms and learning management systems, businesses are moving to ‘telework’ and staggered work times, and service industries are limiting the number of customers who can enter at one time. Amidst all of this rapid change, we see the need for communicating in our own varieties of English, often mixed with other languages, continuing or even increasing. To see this happening, one needs only to observe the nightly news to see the head of the World Health Organization or the United Nations communicating to a global audience in English, or a Japanese doctor explaining to a BBC reporter in his own English how they converted a whole floor to a Corona emergency care facility. In less developed countries, this multilinguistic need may be just as great. In such a climate, our research can provide ever more useful and ‘appliable’ advice to many different fields and disciplines about the best way to facilitate such communication, in the most effective manner. We welcome articles which address this vital emerging research need.

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社论

在 5 月初撰写本文时，仍处于 Covid-19 大流行之中，要为此社论找到一线希望并不容易，或者实际上，要确定社会语言学领域的一些紧迫问题并不容易与世界现在面临的挑战相比。办公室关闭，餐馆和酒吧倒闭，旅行社、活动大厅和航空公司没有顾客，地铁空无一人，政府被自己的官僚惰性绊倒，我们被告知呆在家里，避免直接与人接触所有费用。与全球化和世界主义齐头并进的大量跨文化接触和语言交叉/谈判是否有可能停止，将来我们对英语的需求会减少吗？我必须永远一个人在家里做我的 Jung Dayeon 'figurobics' 吗？我认为情况并非如此，但人际交往的风格会有所不同，处于不同的环境和地点。正如波士顿的一位同事 15 年前对我说的那样，资本主义社会民主主义造成了全球变暖，只有通过同一个系统，我们才能提出解决方案。同样，我们看到私人世界和某些开明的组织正在对我们的新情况进行快速调整。许多国家的传染病专家密切沟通，大学及其教职员工争先恐后地通过视频会议平台和学习管理系统转向在线学习，企业正在转向“远程办公”和错开工作时间，和服务行业正在限制一次可以进入的客户数量。在所有这些快速变化中，我们看到使用我们自己的各种英语进行交流的需求，经常与其他语言混合，继续甚至增加。要看到这种情况，人们只需要观察夜间新闻，就能看到世界卫生组织或联合国的负责人用英语向全球观众传达信息，或者日本医生用自己的英语向 BBC 记者解释他们是如何转变的一整层楼的电晕紧急护理设施。在欠发达国家，这种多语言需求可能同样巨大。在这样的环境下，我们的研究可以为许多不同的领域和学科提供更多有用和“适用”的建议，以最有效的方式促进这种交流。