Theme: LANGUAGE CHANGE: DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC APPROACHES
Deadline: 30 June 2021
Change in languages over time seems to be an inevitable constant. All languages have undergone and, if not dead, are undergoing change. As Ferdinand de Saussure put it more than a century ago, “the linguistic river never stops flowing” (Course in General Linguistics, 1916). The English language has been no exception and topics addressing linguistic change have been—and continue to be—widely discussed from different areas or branches of linguistics, such as generative, historical, variationist or corpus linguistics. There is, however, much that still needs to be investigated.
The journal welcomes contributions that are qualitative and critical, and whose focus resides in the field of language change and variation in English. This may include state-of-the-art research on areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks along with studies that approach language from both a diachronic and/or synchronic perspective.
A suggested, albeit not prescriptive, list of themes includes:
- Factors leading to language change.
- Methods and tools for language change.
- Spread of change.
- Patterns of variation and change.
- Types of variation (phonological, morpho-syntactic, lexical, semantic, etc.).
- Texts and corpora for the study of language change.
- World Englishes.