Call for Papers
Special issue: Epistemology of language and space

Coord.: Héctor Álvarez Mella, Universität Heidelberg

In recent decades, space has been at the center of many linguistic fields concerned with how spatiality (territory, place, social space, virtual space) influences and conditions linguistic phenomena, from linguistic variation and communicative interaction to language shift and maintenance, migration, identity, or language policy and planning.

The special issue aims to bring together articles that address current epistemological issues in the study of language and space from both theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches. The goal of the issue is to offer an interdisciplinary mosaic that reflects how conceptual and methodological developments in the study of the language-space relationship open up new ways of understanding the spatial nature of linguistic phenomena and the linguistic and discursive reality of space.

We invite researchers from all fields of linguistics and other social scientists who study language from a spatial perspective (anthropologists, ethnographers, geographers, sociologists, economists, political scientists) to submit unpublished papers that offer epistemological reflections on the different dimensions of the language-space nexus. We welcome contributions with a purely theoretical focus that critically address concepts, epistemological questions and methodological aspects, as well as papers that present epistemological reflections based on empirical analyses.

Manuscripts may be submitted in English, German, or in a Romance language.

Unpublished original contributions and documents should be submitted taking into account the editorial guidelines. These will be evaluated anonymously by two independent reviewers. The authors will be contacted after the evaluation procedure and shall receive an evaluation report along with a request to revise their contribution if necessary.

Forthcoming issue no. 8 (2023):

Latest date for submission of papers: 15 May 2023

End of peer reviewing process: 1 August 2023

Online-Publication: October 2023