Henry Widdowson is Professor Emeritus, University of London, and Honorary Professor at the University of Vienna. He was a founding editor of the journal Applied Linguistics and for thirty years the applied linguistics adviser to Oxford University Press. He has written extensively over a wide range of issues relating to the theory and practice of discourse pragmatics and language education and his publications include Defining Issues in English Language Teaching (Oxford University Press), Text, Context, Pretext (Blackwell) and his recently published book On the Subject of English (de Cruyter).