CFP: Language Under Discussion

Submission deadline: January 31, 2015

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Details

Language Under Discussion—a new open-access peer-reviewed journal devoted to promoting open-minded debate on central questions in the study of language, from all relevant disciplinary and theoretical perspectives—is looking for open-minded and original authors, volunteer reviewers, and, once the first issue is out, interested readers from all academic disciplines that deal with human languages in one way or another.

Language Under Discussion is a journal that seeks, unapologetically, to promote scholarly discussion of the "big" ques­tions about language - such questions as: What kind of a thing is language? What is the nature of linguistic meaning? How to best conceptualize structure and regularity in human languages? What is the role language plays in culture and how do cultural phenomena reflect on language? What are the roles of cognition and com­mu­ni­ca­tion in language? — We believe that specialized and applied studies are at their best when they are informed by a vision or model of lan­gu­a­ge in general and reflect back on it, just as theoretical discussions are only truly valuable when grounded in empirical research.

Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process. The journal's website can be found at the following URL:

http://www.ludjournal.org/

Each issue of the journal will be composed of a focus paper and discussion notes responding to it. An issue will remain "open" for adding discussion notes to it for a year after the focus paper is out, after which the author(s) of the focus paper will be invited to respond to the discussion notes. In addition, the journal will occasionally feature round-table discussions.

Insofar as formatting citations and other technical aspects of style are concerned, LUD will publish papers in any consistent style (we recommend using one of the major standards, such as the APA style, the MLA style, the Chicago Manual of Style, as appropriate within your discipline). A list of references should appear at the end of each paper. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain and present permissions for reproducing copyrighted materials in the paper, if any.

Authors should state their argument clearly and be explicit about their assumptions, their conclusions, and the implications of their work for our understanding of language. Write in a way that would explain your ideas, not hide them, and provoke your readers to respond.

Please remember that your paper's readers come from different disciplines. This means you should explicitly state, and if necessary, explain, the theoretical framework (or frameworks) within which you are working. Assuming everybody knows does not work. Also, please avoid using jargon and keep the use of abbreviations and acronyms only for those rare occasions on which it would improve the readability of your text. Remember that the same term or abbreviation often has conflicting uses in different disciplines and fields and remember to define key terms according to the ways in which you use them.

No fees of any kind will be levied on the journal's authors or readers at any stage.

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text layout is reasonably legible (we recommend using 1.5 line spacing and 12pt fonts).
  • The text adheres to the stylistic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal, and ends with a list of references.
  • No information identifying the author(s), including self-citations, first-person references, headers with names, acknowledgements, etc., remains in the text if submitted for blind review (when necessary, these references can be restored at the copy-editing stage).

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