Can we escape the textocalypse? Academic publishing as community building [Language on the Move]
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Ingrid Piller
Abstract
Rapid developments in digital technologies have fundamentally changed writing practices leading to an explosion in the number of textual products. The result is a “textocalypse” – a deep crisis in knowledge production and dissemination. Instead of pushing back, academics fuel these degenerations because their careers have become subject to the capitalist imperative to produce and consume – measured in the form of research outputs and citation metrics. Against this background, this commentary argues for a reframing of academic publishing as community building and introduces Language on the Move, an alternative sociolinguistics portal that is both a publication platform and a research community. Motivated by a feminist ethics of care, we decenter the textual product and recenter the lived experience of researchers, particularly those writing from the margins.
References
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Reading: An anniversary conversation with journal editors
- Article
- Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel
- Commentaries
- Sobre el acceso a la bibliografía académica desde el Sur: diagnóstico, estrategias de resistencia y un proyecto disruptivo concreto [Anuario de Glotopolítica]
- Toward un-WEIRDing academic publishing about language [Applied Linguistics]
- Recognising the human in humanities [Australian Review of Applied Linguistics]
- 文字简化、学术产出与技术进化—来自中国的经验 [Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning]
- Meine kleine Lesemaschine: Reflexion zur Begrenzung der Produktion von wissenschaftlichen Texten [International Journal of Multilingualism]
- The politics of writing and reading: An Arabic sociolinguistics perspective [Journal of Arabic Sociolinguistics]
- To read is to cite: A moral proposition [Journal of Linguistic Anthropology]
- Sociolinguistics towards a culturalist turn: a sociolinguistic response to the challenges of mankind [Journal of Multicultural Discourses]
- Wolfgang Klein as Don Quixote [Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development]
- An extended lunch break: a response to Wolfgang Klein [Journal of Pragmatics]
- The economic reterritorialization of academic publishing and the politics of reading [Journal of Sociolinguistics]
- How I learned to stop worrying and love the explosion of information [Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics Society]
- Writing and publishing language studies in the Arab region [Khitabaat Journal]
- Accouchons des idées, pas des articles: politiser la proposition de Wolfgang Klein pour repenser le travail scientifique [Langage et Société]
- Reading or writing is not the question: politicizing the politics of scholarly production and reception [Language, Culture and Society]
- Writing to be read, or how to achieve more through less [Language Matters]
- Writing or reading? An incommensurable choice? [Language in Society]
- Can we escape the textocalypse? Academic publishing as community building [Language on the Move]
- Acceleration, capitalist temporalities and collective challenges in academic publishing [Language Policy]
- On close reading and slow writing [Multilingua]
- Where global discourses meet local realities: the case of scholarly publishing in Sinhala [Sāhityaya]
- Navigating a national linguistics journal through local interests and global pressures: an editorial view on the problem of academic overproduction [Slovo a slovesnost]
- What is the place of African languages in knowledge production? [South African Journal of African Languages]
- Publishing issues and overwhelm [Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies]
- Strengthening local academic publishing in the age of academic fast fashion [TILAMSIK]
- Dromm und die verlorene Balance [The Mouth: Critical Studies on Language, Culture and Society]
- Meritocracy, governmental intervention, and academic nepotism: a South Korean academic publishing landscape [The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea]
- Indagando a aceleração da produção acadêmica com bom humor: Uma visão do sul [Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada]
- Final Commentary
- How to amend the supply-demand imbalance in research?
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Reading: An anniversary conversation with journal editors
- Article
- Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel
- Commentaries
- Sobre el acceso a la bibliografía académica desde el Sur: diagnóstico, estrategias de resistencia y un proyecto disruptivo concreto [Anuario de Glotopolítica]
- Toward un-WEIRDing academic publishing about language [Applied Linguistics]
- Recognising the human in humanities [Australian Review of Applied Linguistics]
- 文字简化、学术产出与技术进化—来自中国的经验 [Chinese Journal of Language Policy and Planning]
- Meine kleine Lesemaschine: Reflexion zur Begrenzung der Produktion von wissenschaftlichen Texten [International Journal of Multilingualism]
- The politics of writing and reading: An Arabic sociolinguistics perspective [Journal of Arabic Sociolinguistics]
- To read is to cite: A moral proposition [Journal of Linguistic Anthropology]
- Sociolinguistics towards a culturalist turn: a sociolinguistic response to the challenges of mankind [Journal of Multicultural Discourses]
- Wolfgang Klein as Don Quixote [Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development]
- An extended lunch break: a response to Wolfgang Klein [Journal of Pragmatics]
- The economic reterritorialization of academic publishing and the politics of reading [Journal of Sociolinguistics]
- How I learned to stop worrying and love the explosion of information [Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics Society]
- Writing and publishing language studies in the Arab region [Khitabaat Journal]
- Accouchons des idées, pas des articles: politiser la proposition de Wolfgang Klein pour repenser le travail scientifique [Langage et Société]
- Reading or writing is not the question: politicizing the politics of scholarly production and reception [Language, Culture and Society]
- Writing to be read, or how to achieve more through less [Language Matters]
- Writing or reading? An incommensurable choice? [Language in Society]
- Can we escape the textocalypse? Academic publishing as community building [Language on the Move]
- Acceleration, capitalist temporalities and collective challenges in academic publishing [Language Policy]
- On close reading and slow writing [Multilingua]
- Where global discourses meet local realities: the case of scholarly publishing in Sinhala [Sāhityaya]
- Navigating a national linguistics journal through local interests and global pressures: an editorial view on the problem of academic overproduction [Slovo a slovesnost]
- What is the place of African languages in knowledge production? [South African Journal of African Languages]
- Publishing issues and overwhelm [Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies]
- Strengthening local academic publishing in the age of academic fast fashion [TILAMSIK]
- Dromm und die verlorene Balance [The Mouth: Critical Studies on Language, Culture and Society]
- Meritocracy, governmental intervention, and academic nepotism: a South Korean academic publishing landscape [The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea]
- Indagando a aceleração da produção acadêmica com bom humor: Uma visão do sul [Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada]
- Final Commentary
- How to amend the supply-demand imbalance in research?
