Reply by the current authors to the review by Constant Leung (see record [rid]2008-09991-006[/rid]) on the original book, Language testing: The social dimension (2006). Leung has drawn attention to possibly the most obvious gap in our treatment: a properly elaborated discussion of the assessment of English as a lingua franca. While consideration of this issue has begun in the work of authors he cites in his review, and elsewhere, it is, as Leung points out, a multiply complex issue, in which the social dimension is the crux of the problem, ‘in terms of speaker subject positions, lexicogrammatical norms, transcultural pragmatic conventions and so on’. It is clear that language testing—particularly significant here as a site of authority about linguistic norms, not unlike a dictionary—has an important role to play in authorizing or de-authorizing English as a lingua franca communication as a proper target for language learning; a further demonstration, if one were needed, of the power of tests. But beyond this political and institutional dimension, the psychometric problems inherent in designing tests based on a construct that is local, situated, and fluid pose a difficult but productive challenge to testers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)