Papers in this special issue on Figurative Language: (1) Cecilia BJÖRKÉN-NYBERG: Vocalising motherhood: The metaphorical conceptualisation of voice in listener responses to The girl on the train by Paula Hawkins (pp. 1-28); (2) Danielle CUDMORE: Prophet, poet, seer, skald: Poetic diction in Merlínusspá (pp. 29-60); (3) Kristina HILDEBRAND: "As fayre an handid man" Malory's figurative language (pp. 61-74); (4) Birgitta SVENSSON: The development of figurative competence in narrative writing: A longitudinal case study (pp. 75-102); (5) Monica KARLSSON: Book Review (pp. 103-106); (6) Keith ALLAN: Book Review (pp. 107-113).

Percentage of L1-based errors in ESL: An update on Ellis (1985) (François Pichette & Justyna Leśniewska, pp. 1-16); Exploring novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers' beliefs representations: A more vivid picture (Saeed Mehrpour & Meisam Moghaddam, pp. 17-50); Movie-generated EFL writing: Discovering the act of writing through visual literacy practices (Nargess Hekmati, Sue-san Ghahremani Ghajar & Hossein Navidinia, pp. 51-64); Parental perceptions toward and practices of heritage language maintenance: Focusing on the United States and Canada (Feng Liang, pp. 65-86); You could so easily od like: Clause final and other pragmatic functions of like in Liverpool English speech (Manel Herat, pp. 87-112); A comprehensive survey on the etymology of three Avestan words: 'Pairikā', 'Xnąϑaiti-' and 'Gaṇdarəβa-' (Farrokh Hajiani & Mohsen Mahmoodi, pp. 113-130); A semiotics representation of outdoor HIV/AIDS pictorial campaign messages in Benin Metropolis, Nigeria (Patience Obiageri Solomon-Etefia, pp. 131-158)

The effect of storytelling format (dialogic vs. narrative) on linguistic recall and comprehension (1-28) by Alfonso Abad MANCHENO; practicing what they preach? A comparison of teacher candidate beliefs and practices (29-54) by Scott KISSAU, Marion RODGERS & Helga HAUDECK; Teaching the Dutch how to pronounce English (55-80) by Frans HERMANS & Peter SLOEP; Superstition in the works of Nizami Ganjavi: A phenomeno-semiotic analysis (81-90) by Fereshteh AHANGARI; An optimality-based account of diachronic lenition in Persian (91-108) by Mozhgan HOOSHMAND; On demystifying L2 learner goal differences in task-based production (109-132) by Mohamed Ridha BEN MAAD; Language testing: The state of the art (An online interview with James Dean Brown) (133-143) by James Dean BROWN & Mohammad Ali SALMANI NODOUSHAN.

PAPERS IN THIS ISSUE: A rhetoric-thematic analysis of surah "Waqi'a" (1-16); Studying Chinese as a foreign language: Learner attitudes and language learning (17-40); Iconicity in the syntactic structure of Mandarin Chinese (41-66); The impact of English versus Persian songs on Iranian EFL learners' mastery of English letters (67-88); The role of culture in cooperative learning (89-120); The interface between ESP, genre analysis, and rhetorical structure analysis (121-160); Four key focus on form options (161-171); Book Review (172-185)