In this article, we argue that the way decoloniality is invoked in sociolinguistics runs the risk of becoming a buzzword that is sometimes deployed with inadequate attention to how its conceptual and political premises need to be critically contextualized. We propose three interconnected challenges that critical applied/sociolinguists would need to address more seriously in order to avoid the depoliticization of the discussions around language and (de)coloniality: (1) the insistence on an incommensurable non-western alterity outside modernity; (2) the production of new binaries despite trying to undermine them; and (3) the decontextualization of the studied phenomena from on-the-ground situations in highly complex circumstances. We claim, on the one hand, that ‘Northern’ appropriation of decoloniality can offer self-deluding comfort that one is engaging in a politics of emancipation, yet all that is taking place is a form of withdrawal from the messiness of contemporary politics. On the other hand, this depoliticized decoloniality is also instrumentalized in the Global South to romanticize indigeneity/minorities and exploit them for insidious political purposes, generating recursive internal differentiations and inequality.
Impact Factor: 1.2
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International Journal of the Sociology of Language
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Herausgegeben von:
Alexandre Duchêne
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Begründet von:
Joshua A. Fishman
Sprache:
Englisch
Erstveröffentlichung:
1. Januar 1974
Erscheinungsweise:
6 Hefte pro Jahr
Über diese Zeitschrift
The International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) is dedicated to the development of the sociology of language as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches – theoretical and empirical – supplement and complement each other, contributing thereby to the growth of language-related knowledge, applications, values and sensitivities.
The Joshua A. Fishman Award presented by Mouton
The Joshua A. Fishman Award recognizes outstanding unpublished PhD dissertations on a topic related to the sociology of language. The award includes a cash prize and nomination for publication in De Gruyter Mouton's Contributions to the Sociology of Language book series. Updates will be announced on the award website.
Research integrity resources
The International Journal of the Sociology of Language follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines on Publication Ethics and Research integrity on the policies it adopts and how to deal with instances of misconduct. The De Gruyter Statement on Publication Ethics is included below as a PDF.
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17. April 2025
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Heft 295
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Heft 294Special Issue: The globalization of English and the Turkic-speaking countries of the Former Soviet Union: attitudes, policy and implementation; Issue Editors: Michael Byram, Anthony J. Liddicoat, Azad Mammadov and Tamilla Mammadova
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Heft 293
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Heft 292Special Issue: Language, Work & Social Critique: In Dialogue with the Translated Works of Josiane Boutet; Issue Editors: Larissa Semiramis Schedel and Katy Highet
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Heft 291Special Issue: Negotiating Sociolinguistic Justice: Turning Spaces of Inequality into Spaces of Conscientization; Issue Editors: Luisa Martín Rojo, Joan Pujolar and Estibaliz Amorrortu
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Heft 289-290Special Issue: The Politics of Academic Reading: 50th Anniversary Issue of IJSL; Issue Editor: Alexandre Duchêne
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Heft 288Special Issue: Mobile Borders; Issue Editors: Juldyz Smagulova and Kara Fleming
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Heft 287Special Issue: ‘Spaces of otherwise’? Towards a sociolinguistics of potentiality; Issue Editors: Caroline Kerfoot and Christopher Stroud
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Heft 286Special Issue: Languages in Modern Day Puerto Rico; Issue Editors: Katherine Morales Lugo, Kevin S. Carroll and Simón D. Campos
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Heft 285Special Issue: Being/becoming better people: personality, morality and language education; Issue Editors: Katy Highet and Sara Nyssen
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Heft 284Special Issue: Ideologies of contact and space in Japan; Issue Editor: Ayumi Miyazaki
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Heft 283
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Heft 282Special Issue: Raciolinguistic perspective on labor in the Americas; Issue Editors: Lara Alonso and Laura Villa Galán
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Heft 281
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Heft 280Special Issue: Bringing the Language Forward: Engagements with Quechua Language Planning and Policy; Issue Editors: Frances Kvietok and Nancy H. Hornberger
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Heft 279Special Issue: Youth at the Margins: Ethnographic Perspectives on Language and Liminality; Issue Editors: Inmaculada García-Sánchez and Ariana Mangual Figueroa
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Heft 278Special Issue: Diglossia and beyond: Revisiting Arabic vernaculars in the contemporary Maghreb; Issue Editors: Atiqa Hachimi, Jacopo Falchetta and Montserrat Benítez Fernández
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Heft 277Special Issue: Linguistic justice and global English; Issue Editors: Josep Soler and Sergi Morales-Gálvez
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Heft 276Special Issue: Language, Work and Affective Capitalism; Issue Editors: Kati Dlaske and Alfonso Del Percio
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Heft 275Special Issue: Spaces of upset in the Nordic region: Sociolinguistics beyond cohesion and consensus in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden; Issue Editors: Linus Salö, David Karlander, Sirpa Leppänen and Elina Westinen
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Heft 274Special Issue: Language Making; Issue Editors: Philipp Krämer, Ulrike Vogl and Leena Kolehmainen
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Heft 273Special Issue: Diaspora Japanese; Issue Editors: Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain
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Heft 272Special Issue: Language Ideologies and Social Positioning: Structures, Scales, and Practices; Issue Editors: Brigitta Busch, Jürgen Spitzmüller and Mi-Cha Flubacher
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Heft 271Special Issue: Ideologies of English in Asia; Issue Editors: Jinhyun Cho, Alexandra Grey and Loy Lising
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Heft 270Special Issue: The Language Division of Labour Across Occupations; Issue Editor: Amado Alarcón Alarcón
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Heft 269Special Issue: Changing Faces of Transnational Communities in Britain; Issue Editors: Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen, Zhu Hua and Li Wei
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Heft 267-268Special Issue: Prefiguring Knowledge Production in the Sociology of Language; Issue Editors: Alexandre Duchêne, Sibonile Edith Ellece, Ruanni Tupas, Maria Sabaté-Dalmau, Virginia Unamuno and Jacqueline Urla
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Heft 266Singles Issue: Multiplicity and Stratification of Languages and their Speakers; Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas
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Heft 265Special Issue: Reconstituting Selves and Others: Racialization, Voicing, and Resemiotization in Raciolinguistic Perspective; Guest Editors: Jennifer B. Delfino and Maureen Kosse
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Heft 264Special Issue: The promise of language: Betwixt empowerment and the reproduction of inequality; Guest Editors: Kamilla Kraft and Mi-Cha Flubacher
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Heft 263Sociolinguistic Frontiers: Imagining language and society since the 1960s
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Heft 262Special Issue: Language, Inequality and Global Care Work, Issue Editors: Kellie Gonçalves and Anne Schluter
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Heft 261Special Issue: Corsican language: between past and future challenges, Guest Editor: Romain Colonna
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Heft 260Singles Issue: Adapting to changing landscapes: Language standardization, revitalization, digitalization. Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas
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Heft 259Special Issue: Literacy in the study of social change: Lusophone perspectives, Editors: Marilyn Martin-Jones, Izabel Magalhães and Mike Baynham
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Heft 258Special Issue: Language in the mines, Issue Editors: Leonie Cornips and Pieter Muysken
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Heft 257Special Issue: Experiences of speakerhood: Migrant speakers’ battles for inclusion in traditionally monolingual and bilingual contexts, Issue Editors: Rosina Márquez Reiter and Luisa Martín Rojo
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Heft 256Special Issue: Transgender and language Issue Editors: Emilia Di Martino and Luise von Flotow
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Heft 255Special Issue: Language, heritage, and family: a dynamic perspective, Issue Editor: Christina Higgins
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Heft 254Singles Issue: Domains, hierarchies and ideologies of language use, Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas
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Heft 253Special Issue: Language and schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language medium matters, Issue Editor: Chaise LaDousa
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Heft 252Special Issue: Surveying speakers and the politics of census, Issue Editors: Alexandre Duchêne and Philippe N. Humbert
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Heft 251Special Issue: Translation policies and minority languages, Issue Editors: María-Sierra Córdoba Serrano and Oscar Diaz Fouces
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Heft 250Special Issue: Storytelling in globalized spaces: a linguistic ethnographic perspective
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Heft 249Special Issue: Francoprovençal in Europe and North America, Issue Editors: Jonathan Kasstan and Naomi Nagy
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Heft 248Singles Issue: Language contact, mixing, and separation, Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas
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Heft 247Special Issue: Language and globalization in South and Central Asian spaces, Issue Editors: Brook Bolander and Till Mostowlansky
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Heft 246Special Issue: Indigenous Language Regimes in the Americas Issue Editor: Serafín M. Coronel-Molina
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Heft 245Special Issue: Language diversity and endangerment in Tibet, Issue Editor: Gerald Roche
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Heft 244Special Issue: Language Planning and Multilingual Malaysia, Issue Editors: Wang Xiaomei and Minglang Zhou
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Heft 243Special Issue: Rearticulating the past: the continuing influence of Joshua A. Fishman, Issue Editors: Katherine A. Masters and Sinfree Makoni
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Heft 242Singles Issue: Language Shift and Shifting Standards, Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas
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Heft 241Special Issue: US Perspectives on Super-Diversity and Schooling, Issue Editor: Nelson Flores
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Heft 240Special Issue: Indigenous American languages in contact and in context, Issue Editor: Aurolyn Luykx
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Heft 239Special Issue: Exploring glottopolitical dynamics in Africa: the Spanish colonial past and beyond, Issue Editors: Susana Castillo-Rodríguez and Laura Morgenthaler García
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Heft 238Special Issue: Multilingualism and minorities in the Czech sociolinguistic space, Issue Editors: Lida Cope and Eva Eckert
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Heft 237Special Issue: Middle Eastern Languages in Diasporic USA communities, Issue Editors: Maryam Borjian and Charles Häberl
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Heft 236Singles Issue: Contact, Variation and Competition of Languages, Issue Editor: Florian Coulmas
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Heft 235Special Issue: Language Conflict, Issue Editors: Jeroen Darquennes and Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost
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Heft 234Special Issue: (New) Social dynamics of multilingual practices in the post-independent South Africa: between marginalization and harmonization, Issue Editor: Leketi Makalela
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Heft 233Special Issue: The Transnational Politics of Language in Hispaniola/Yspayola, Issue Editor: Juan R. Valdez
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Heft 232Special Issue: The Language Management Approach: Perspectives on the Interplay of Bottom-Up and Top-Down
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Heft 231Special Issue: New Speakers of Minority Languages: The Challenging Opportunity
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Heft 230Special Issue: Ethnolinguistic Identities and Loyalties
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Heft 229Special Issue: Language and Religion in Asian Contexts and Texts
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Heft 228Signs in Context: Multilingual and Multimodal Texts in Semiotic Space
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Heft 227Languages and Borders: International Perspectives
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Heft 226Jewish Language Contact
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Heft 225Language Capital and Development
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Heft 224Fluid Borders–Languages and Varieties in Flux
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Heft 223Breton: The Postvernacular Challenge
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Heft 222Migration, Language Maintenance and Shift
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Heft 221Language Competition and Linguistic Diffusion: Interdisciplinary Models and Case Studies
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Heft 220Religion and Language
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Heft 219Ethnography of Language Policy: Theory, Method and Practice
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Heft 218Language Identification Reconsidered
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Heft 217The Kurdish Linguistic Landscape: Vitality, Linguicide and Resistance
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Heft 216Language and the International University
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Heft 215The Contact between Putonghua and Minority Languages in China
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Heft 214Language use in Melanesia
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Heft 213
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Heft 212Untrodden Paths in Linguistic Identity Research
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Heft 211The Sociolinguistics of Tunisia
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Heft 210Italian Sociolinguistics: Twenty years on
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Heft 209The Many Faces of Language Emancipation
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Heft 208Affective Aspects of Second and Foreign Languages
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Heft 207Translators and Interpreters: Geographic Displacement and Linguistic Consequences
Die Zeitschrift International Journal of the Sociology of Language veröffentlicht Sonder- und Themenhefte, die sich auf wichtige und neu aufkommende Themen im Bereich der Forschung konzentrieren. Die Zeitschrift hat ein strenges Verfahren eingeführt, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Manuskripte für Sonderausgaben denselben Qualitätsstandards und Peer-Review-Verfahren unterliegen wie reguläre Manuskripte. Weitere Informationen über die Peer-Review-Politik der Zeitschrift finden Sie in den "Hinweisen für Autoren".
Aktuelle Themenhefte
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Band 2025 | Heft 294 Special Issue: The globalization of English and the Turkic-speaking countries of the Former Soviet Union: attitudes, policy and implementation; Issue Editors: Michael Byram, Anthony J. Liddicoat, Azad Mammadov and Tamilla Mammadova
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Band 2025 | Heft 292 Special Issue: Language, Work & Social Critique: In Dialogue with the Translated Works of Josiane Boutet; Issue Editors: Larissa Semiramis Schedel and Katy Highet
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Band 2025 | Heft 291 Special Issue: Negotiating Sociolinguistic Justice: Turning Spaces of Inequality into Spaces of Conscientization; Issue Editors: Luisa Martín Rojo, Joan Pujolar and Estibaliz Amorrortu
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Band 2024 | Heft 289-290 Special Issue: The Politics of Academic Reading: 50th Anniversary Issue of IJSL; Issue Editor: Alexandre Duchêne
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Band 2024 | Heft 288 Special Issue: Mobile Borders; Issue Editors: Juldyz Smagulova and Kara Fleming
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Band 2024 | Heft 287 Special Issue: ‘Spaces of otherwise’? Towards a sociolinguistics of potentiality; Issue Editors: Caroline Kerfoot and Christopher Stroud
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Band 2024 | Heft 286 Special Issue: Languages in Modern Day Puerto Rico; Issue Editors: Katherine Morales Lugo, Kevin S. Carroll and Simón D. Campos
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Band 2024 | Heft 285 Special Issue: Being/becoming better people: personality, morality and language education; Issue Editors: Katy Highet and Sara Nyssen
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Band 2023 | Heft 284 Special Issue: Ideologies of contact and space in Japan; Issue Editor: Ayumi Miyazaki
| Journal Impact Factor | 1.2 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| Journal Citation Indicator | 0.79 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| CiteScore | 2.8 | 2024, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2025) |
| SCImago Journal Rank | 0.627 | 2024, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2025; Data Source: Scopus) |
| Source Normalized Impact per Paper | 1.435 | 2024, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2025; Data Source: Scopus) |
Special issues. The International Journal of the Sociology of Language invites proposals for special issues. Special issues proposals should be submitted via our electronic system, Scholar one, please go to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijsl and you will be guided through the process (please select "Special Issue proposal"). The submitted document should include the following information:
- Proposed Title
- Outline of the Issue (3-4 pages). What is this issue about? Why is it important? What contribution does it make to the study of language in society? What other studies have been conducted in this area, and what does your Issue contribute to this specific field? The outline should also include a bibliography.
- Table of content, including abstracts and titles of each paper
- List of authors (including their affiliation and emails)
- Approximate submission date for the issue
- Short CV of Guest editor(s)
You are free to decide how many papers will be included in the Special Issue. The length of published papers usually ranges from 7 000 – 10 000 words (approximately 25 to 35 pages Times New Roman double-spaced). The manuscript should not exceed 400 000 characters (spaces included) in total.
Papers can be written in English, French, German and Spanish. Further languages may also be considered.
IJSL wishes to ensure a broad participation of scholars and encourages Guest Editors to consider the inclusion of scholars located in regions less represented in academic publishing.
If your proposal is accepted, we will then send you guidelines for you to read and agree to before an issue can be commissioned. The acceptance of a special issue proposal does not guarantee its’ publication. Please bear in mind that all papers will have to go through a careful peer-review process handled by the Journal’s editorial team.
Article submission. The International Journal of the Sociology of Language invites submissions of unsolicited articles for consideration for publication. Each of the six issues published annually will include a dedicated section for Singles papers. We accept submissions in English, French, Spanish, or German. The length of published papers usually ranges from 7 000 – 10 000 words (approximately 25 to 35 pages Times New Roman double-spaced). Your manuscript should be submitted via our online submission system, Scholar one, http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijsl (please select "Article") and you will be guided through the process.
Preparing your manuscript
- Please format your manuscript according to the De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet. Failure to do this may result in rejection of the manuscript.
- Please make sure your paper is fully anonymized since submissions are subject to double-blind peer-review.
- Authors are asked to check their manuscripts very carefully before submitting them in order to prevent delays and extra costs at the proof stage. In-text citations should be carefully checked against listings in the Reference section to make sure that publication dates and the spelling of names match, and that all works cited are listed, and vice versa.
- Before submitting your article please have a look at our Publication Ethics Statement and our copyright agreement
- If you have any general questions please visit our FAQ page for journal authors
Review process
The Special Issue proposals are reviewed by the General Editor and the Associate Editors. You will be informed by email about the decision. You might also be asked to revise the proposal based on the Editorial Team comments.
The double-blind peer-review process for articles (including articles submitted within a Special Issue) takes on average two months. Submissions are sent to 2–3 reviewers. You will be informed by e-mail if your manuscript has been accepted or rejected or if it requires revision. Every effort is made to respond to authors in a timely manner.
Proofs
Authors will receive electronic proofs (PDF format) for correction, which must be returned by dates determined by the publishers.
Offprints
Upon publication, authors will receive electronic offprints (in PDF format) of their contribution.
Hybrid Open Access
Authors have the option to publish their article under an open access license. The standard article processing charge for a hybrid open access article is 2,400 Euro (plus VAT if applicable). Please note that corresponding authors from institutions with which we have a transformative agreement, can publish open access without paying the fee. More information on the eligible institutions and articles can be found here.
General Editor
Alexandre Duchêne
University of Fribourg
Institute of Multilingualism
Rue de Morat 24
1700 Fribourg
Switzerland
E-mail: alexandre.duchene@unifr.ch
Associate Editors
Sibonile Ellece (University of Botswana)
Maria Sabaté Dalmau (University of Lleida, Spain)
Ruanni Tupas (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Virginia Unamuno (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, CONICET)
Jacqueline Urla (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
General Editor Emeritus
Ofelia Garcia
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Founding Editor (1974-2015)
Joshua A. Fishman
Editorial Board (2021-2023)
Ashraf Abdelhay (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar)
Nana Aba Appiah Amfo (University of Ghana, Ghana)
Lilian Atanga (University of Bamenda, Cameroon)
Mompoloki Bagwasi (University of Botswana, Botswana)
Brook Bolander (Monash University, Australia)
Juan Eduardo Bonin (Universidad de San Martin/CONICET, Argentina)
José del Valle (The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)
Paulin Djité (Université FHB, Côte d'Ivoire)
Nicole Dołowy-Rybińska (Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Poland)
Jie Dong (Tsinghua University Beijing, China)
Nelson Flores (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Ilana Gershon (Indiana University, USA)
Monica Heller (University of Toronto, Canada)
Miyako Inoue (Stanford University, USA)
David Karlander (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Daniela Lauria (CONICET/ Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Adrienne Lo (University of Waterloo, Canada)
Beatriz Lorente (University of Bern, Switzerland)
Luisa Martin Rojo (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Finex Ndhlovu (University of New England, Australia)
Sandra Nossik (Université de Franche-Comté, France)
Joseph Sung-Yul Park (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Sari Pietikäinen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Shanthini Pillai (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia)
Phyak Prem (Tribhuvan University, Nepal)
Harshana Rambukwella (Open University of Sri Lanka)
Stephanie Rudwick (University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic)
Smagulova Juldyz (KIMEP University, Kazakhstan)
Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Virginia Zavala (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru)
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eISSN:
1613-3668
ISSN:
0165-2516
Sprache:
Englisch
Verlag:
De Gruyter Mouton
Weitere Informationen
Erstveröffentlichung:
1. Januar 1974
Erscheinungsweise:
6 Hefte pro Jahr
eISSN:
1613-3668
ISSN:
0165-2516
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