About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Language Under Discussion is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to promoting open-minded debate on central questions in the study of language, from all relevant disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Our journal seeks, unapologetically, to promote scholarly discussion of the “big” ques­tions about language—such questions as: What kind of a thing is language? What is the nature of linguistic meaning? How to best conceptualize structure and regularity in human languages? What is the role language plays in culture and how do cultural phenomena reflect on language? What are the roles of cognition and com­mu­ni­ca­tion in language?—We believe that specialized and applied studies are at their best when they are informed by a vision or model of lan­gu­a­ge in general and reflect back on it, just as theoretical discussions are only truly valuable when grounded in empirical research.

Language Under Discussion is designed to actively promote debate among its readers and contributors. Each of the journal’s issues will feature a discussion of a topic or thesis and will remain open for a period of time to eventually include a series of discussion notes on the topic of the issue and a response by the authors of the original contributions.

Language Under Discussion welcomes well-argued contributions from linguists, philosophers, communication theorists, cognitive scientists, sociologists, literary scholars, education scholars, and scholars in any other fields that offer a fresh perspective on language—what it is, how people use it, and how it can be studied and analyzed. We also accept empirical and applied studies, provided their theoretical implications for our understanding of language are clearly stated and are more than trivial.

Peer Review Process

Language Under Discussion is a peer-reviewed open-access journal that combines pre-publication and post-publication peer review.

In Language Under Discussion we seek to turn the peer review process from a form of summary judgment into something more akin to dialogue, aiming to strengthen and improve the papers we publish and the discussion that follows them. An important feature of the review process in LUD is that an initial decision to reject a contribution is not yet a final verdict. If the author(s) of a rejected contribution can convince the editors that the arguments for rejecting the paper are misguided or flawed, or that the critique voiced against the paper more properly belongs to the post-publication discussion stage, we will be glad to publish a suitably revised version of the paper. That said, if the editors remain unconvinced, they will make the final decision to reject.

Once published, papers are open to post-publication peer review and discussion: While an issue is open, authors are invited to publish discussion notes around the focus article or round-table contributions in the issue (online comments to papers are currently disabled for technical reasons, and we hope to re-enable them once this becomes possible, thus adding another layer of peer review).

All accepted articles will be published under a Creative Commons license, with the author(s) retaining copyright for the work. No charges or fees of any kind are levied on contributors or readers at any stage in the process.

Publication Frequency

Focus articles and round-table discussions accepted for publication in Language Under Discussion shall each be published as a separate issue of the journal once finally accepted for publication, copy-edited and proofread. Every new issue of the journal will remain open for one year, during which discussion notes can be added to it.

A new volume of the journal is opened every calendar year. The number of issues in each volume is irregular, and depends on the number of focus articles and round-table discussions accepted for publication.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate free and open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. As a general policy, all content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), though we will respect explicit requests from authors to use a diifferent Creative Commons license instead.

All Language Under Discussion publications can be shared freely, so long as an acknowledgement is made of the publication's authorship and the journal issue in which it first appeared is correctly cited.

No fees of any kind are levied on authors or readers at any stage.