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I will give a brief
historical overview of academic journal scholarship in linguistics and
then provide brief abstracts of several prominent journals in the field.
Here I am reviewing only relatively "pure" linguistics journals;
that is, I have not considered journals that focus mainly on applied
linguistics or those focusing on linguistic issues in the teaching of
English to speakers of other languages.
Historical Overview
Academic journal publication of scholarship in linguistics dates back
to the nineteenth century, when research in historical linguistics was
a prominent feature of some of the oldest scholarly journals in English
studies, such as PMLA, Studies in Philology, and Philological
Quarterly. After Saussure, scholarship in linguistics generally
moved in a new direction. In place of the emphasis upon tracing the
geneaologies of languages and uncovering linguistic evidence from earlier
historical periods came an emphasis upon the ways languages operate
to produce meaning. Linguists developed an interest in the actual physical
processes of the production of language (phonetics, etc.) and in the
relationships between language and thought (cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics,
syntax, structure, grammar, etc.) and between language and communication
(sociolinguistics, syntax and structure again, etc.). These new concerns
are reflected in the mission statements of new professional organizations
such as the Linguistics Society of America , "founded in 1924 for
the advancement of the scientific study of language," according
to the masthead of its journal, Language. That the LSA emphasizes the
"scientific study of language" is significant; the society
was at pains to distinguish its research from that of the earlier generation
of linguists, who were now seen as quaint and amateurish.
Another significant
expansion in linguistics scholarship occurred in the late 1950's and
early 1960's, fueled by the revolutionary theories of Noam Chomsky and
by the infusion of massive government support for linguistic research
as a side-effect of the cold war. Journals such as Linguistic Inquiry,
published at MIT and recognized as the pre-eminent organ of Chomskyan
theory, and Journal of Linguistics, the journal of the Linguistics Society
of Britain, were founded during this period.
Journals:
Language
Language is the official publication of the Linguistics
Society of America. As I mentioned above, the society was founded on
the heels of the Saussurean revolution, "for the advancement of
the scientific study of language," and its editorial profile continues
to follow that lead. The editor's annual report for 1999 asserts that
the journal attempts to publish "the best of what is new in the
field" and to represent "the breadth of the field . . . (in
terms of both areas and ideology)." The editor goes on to concede
that "the one area that is clearly underrepresented is abstract
deductive formal syntax, but we cannot publish what we do not receive."
I think these observations reveal several things about the journal.
First, that Language conceives its identity as a rigorously scientific
journal in the paradigm of the empirical sciences is suggested by its
emphasis on new research, rather than, say, making itself a forum for
critical debates on issues in the field. When the editor mentions "ideology,"
then, I think he is using the term loosely and colloquially to refer
to different theoretical orientations within a relatively narrow discursive
disciplinary field. The different areas he mentions would include topics
in the traditions in strictly "scientific" linguistics such
as phonology, syntax and semantics. Featured articles in the June 1999
issue showed a heavy emphasis upon syntax with titles such as "Explaining
Article-Possessor Complementarity: Economic Motivation in Noun Phrase
Syntax," "Processing Complexity and Filler-Gap Dependencies
Across Grammars," "Revisiting Tungusic Classification from
the Bottom Up: A Comparison of Evenki and Oroqen," and The Grammaticalization
of the Proximative in Tok Pisin." The book review section of the
journal includes reviews of books on sociolinguistics and comparative
linguistics, but these topics are not generally found among the journal's
feature articles.
Journal of
Linguistics
Journal of Linguistics is the official journal of the
Linguistics Association of Great Britain. It was founded in the mid-1950's
and is published by Cambridge University Press. According to the journal's
website (http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/)
the journal "is concerned with all branches of theoretical linguistics,
including syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics, semantics, pragmatics
and historical, sociological, computational, psychological and applied
aspects of language and linguistic theory." However, it seems to
be more concerned with theoretical linguistics than with applied linguistics.
Recent feature articles include essays on phonetics, syntax and semantics:
"Towards an explanation of phonetic differentiation in masculine
and feminine personal names," "A generalized rightward movement
analysis of antecedent contained deletion," and "Syllable
asymmetries in comparative Yoruba phonology."
Language
Teaching
Like the Journal of Linguistics, Language Teaching is
published by Cambridge University Press. Issues include abstracts summarizing
research from key periodicals and review articles describing developments
in areas such as computer-assisted instruction, assessment, gender and
language, learner strategies and global Englishes. The journal's website
is at http://uk.cambridge.org/journals/lta/.
Language
in Society
Edited by Jane Hill at the University of Arizona, Language
in Society publishes articles and book reviews on topics in sociolinguistics,
with an international range of contributors. Its web site is at http://uk.cambridge.org/journals/lsy/.
Linguistic
Inquiry
Founded in the late 1960's Linguistic Inquiry is published at MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology); it is the major venue for research in the
Chomskyan tradition. One interesting feature of the journal is that
it publishes discussions and debates on current issues in Chomskyan
linguistics in addition to conventional research articles. The Spring,
1997 issue, for example includes an essay in which John McCarthy disputes
a claim (made by Stuart Davis in an earlier issue of the journal) that
"optimality theory" in phonology cannot, by itself, account
for the range of possible patterns of phonemes in a particular grammar.
McCarthy uses Davis's own research data base material from Palestinian
Arabic to demonstrate that Davis is wrong. For both these scholars,
as for those represented in this journal in general, the goal is to
define universal characteristics of language that would hold for all
languages; the fact that they are using a Palestinian Arabic database
is incidental. Sample essays and abstracts from Linguistic Inquiry can
be found on the web at http://mitpress.mit.edu/LI.
Studia Linguistica:
Studia Linguistica is subtitled "A Journal in General
Linguistics." The journal dates from the late 1940's. It produced
out of the University of Lund, Sweden and published by Blackwell publishers
in Oxford, UK. . It is not affiliated with a professional organization.
Studia Linguistica publishes articles mostly in English and occasionally
in French, with a mixture of theoretical and disciplinary orientations.
According to its web site the journal aims to provide "an international
forum for the discussion of theoretical linguistic research, primarily
within the fields of grammar, cognitive semantics and language typology."
Contents and abstracts are available on-line, as are on-line subscriptions
for the entire journal, at http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/journals/STUL/descript.htm.
International
Journal of the Sociology of Language
IJSL is published by Mouton de Gruyter, and edited in
Israel by Joshua Fishman. As its title suggests, it focuses on sociolinguistic
research. One distinctive feature of this journal is that it usually
publishes special topics issues in which several feature articles all
focus on the same topic. According to the editors, "The policy
of one topic per issue means that all of the articles to appear in a
given issue are commissioned, or come as a result of a relatively long
lead time "call-for-papers" on a particular subject. Each
issue is entrusted to an Issue Editor whose plans for the issue (contents,
participants, etc.) are subject to the approval of the General Editor
and his staff." (IJSL 137, Title Page)
This format produces
some very interesting reading. Notice how it grows out of a rather different
set of assumptions about the nature of research from those, say, of
Language (described above). Whereas Language assumes it is publishing
empirical research --passively recording the research of discovery--IJSL
presumably sees itself as shaping the agenda of research, playing an
active role in defining what is important to talk about by commissioning
essays on particular topics. These contrasting sets of assumptions are
each characteristic of the contrasting paradigms of research in theoretical
linguistics and sociolinguistics. Recent special issues of IJSL
have focused on "Language and Politics," with several essays
on Middle Eastern and North African language issues and "American
English in Europe," with essays on the affects of American language
and culture resulting from media saturation, tourism, and the resistance
to acculturation of American expatriates. The journal's web page is
at http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/.
Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology
This is a new journal, only seven or eight years old, published by the
American Anthropological Association, which, according to its website,
"was founded in 1983 to advance the study of language in its social
and cultural context and to encourage communication of the results of
such study." Contents and abstracts of essays in recent issues
can be found on the web at http://www.aaanet.org/sla/publications.htm
.
Anthopological
Linguistics
Founded in 1959, Anthropological Linguistics is a quarterly journal
published by the department of Anthropology and the American Indian
Research Institute at Indiana University. The journal features research
on ". . . cultural, historical, and philological aspects of linguistic
study, including analyses of texts and discourse; studies of semantic
systems and cultural classifications; onomastic studies; ethnohistorical
papers that draw significantly on linguistic data; studies of linguistic
prehistory and genetic classification, both methodological and substantive;
discussions and interpretations of archival material; edited historical
documents; and contributions to the history of the field. "
(http://www.indiana.edu/~anthling/geninfo.html)
Though it publishes
articles on any language, the journal focuses especially on languages
of the Americas. An index with abstract of recent articles (going back
to 1989) can be found on the web at http://www.indiana.edu/~anthling/al_index.html.
Canadian
Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique:
The Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique
is the official publication of the Canadian Society of Linguistics.
It publishes articles in English and French, with a mixture of theoretical
and disciplinary orientations. CJL/Rcl publishes long book reviews,
and lots of them. In the Summer, 1998 issue, for example, there is only
one feature article--a 56-page piece entitled "Events, Times, and
Mohawk Verbal Inflection" by Mark Baker and Lisa Demena Travis--and
fourteen book reviews, most of them running to four or five pages.
Language
and Communication
"The primary aim" of Language and Communication, according
to its title page, "is to fill the need for a publicational forum
devoted to the discussion of topics and issues in communication which
are of interdisciplinary significance." "By focusing attention
on the many ways in which language is intergrated with other forms of
communicational activity and interactional behaviour," the statement
continues, "it is intended to explore ways of developing a science
of communication which is not restricted by existing disciplinary boundaries."
In order to achieve this transdisciplinary goal the journal invites
articles from scholars working in a wide variety of fields: anthropology,
the arts, artificial intelligence, education, ethology, linguistics,
philosophy, physiology, psychology and the social sicences. The contents
for the July 1999 issue give a sense of the character of the journal;
there one finds an essay on the relationship between style and thought
in Wittgenstein's writing; an essay on the "punctuated equilibrium
model of language development"; an essay on female gender and subjectivity;
and an essay on Chomsky and the evolution of language. As may be inferred
from these titles, the journal tends to publish essays that take a rather
"big picture" perspective, discussing issues of broad, paradigmatic
historical and philosophical interest rather than narrowly-defined scientific
research.
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