Ze wstępu: This monographic volume presents ten selected studies exploring the multiple interrelationships between language and the communities of speakers who sustain it, focusing on the various roles that language plays for its users, both native and non-native. On the empirical side of things, the studies included in this volume focus on the English language and its socio-cultural and educational contexts. The multifarious relationships between language and the communities of its users are addressed here from different perspectives and points of view. All the different threads fi nd their synthesis in the ways in which language, a carrier of culture and marker of national, social and cultural identity, refl ects the changes taking place in the communities using it as a tool for interpersonal communication, accumulation, storage and dissemination of information, social interactions, transmission of culture, and many other purposes, which are the focus of this volume. The diverse topics explored by the authors speak to the richness and complexity of the social and cultural meanings of language and the importance of questions of language ownership, language attitudes, and linguistic as well as cultural diversity.