Language Problems and Language Planning - Volume 47, Issue 3, 2023

Abstract

Local (peripheral) social sciences and humanities journals are underrepresented in major indexes due to linguistic, ideological, and disciplinary bias. To seek international visibility without sacrificing their local identity, they are adopting translation-mediated bilingual publishing to construct a new identity. Since bilingual publishing is a new trend, what identity is being constructed is rarely investigated. This article aims to explore the linguistic, content, and communicated identity of those journals. Content analysis was used to review the language policies (websites, article abstracts, and full articles), the composition of editorial teams, pools of contributors, instructions to authors, journal overviews, and website logos or journal covers of sixty-eight peripheral social sciences and humanities journals. The results indicate that the majority are attempting to construct a glocal identity, a hybrid identity to maintain their unique status as a local journal and simultaneously strive for better recognition in the international community. Another finding is that the journals are divided in terms of communicated identity, causing obstacles to the successful construction of a new identity. This study provides evidence on the construction of a glocal identity by bilingually published peripheral journals and has implications for the strategic use of linguistic and non-linguistic resources in identity construction.

Abstract

The academic and, subsequently, social legitimation of Basque studies – namely, their constitution as a subject of scholarly inquiry in the early twentieth century – is proposed as a key factor in the early process of standardisation of the Basque language: this legitimation created a climate that was propitious to the development of civil discourse and favourable to the pursuit of consensus regarding the construction of a literary standard. In its support, I evidence the breadth and strength of the involved actors’ ideology, as well as the influence of civil discourse and the spirit of consensus upon the three phases that characterised Basque standardisation: (1) the ideological polarisation that led to consensual failure around 1901; (2) the ideological depolarisation that culminated in the foundation of the Academy of the Basque Language in 1918; and (3) the ideological repolarisation that caused the breakdown of civil discourse during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923–1930). Its standardisation was closely linked to the promotion of the journal Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos and the use of scientific-inductive method in modern Bascology. Oddly, historians and linguists have almost completely ignored the influence of the legitimation of an area study (linked to a particular language) on that language’s standardisation.

Abstract

The concept of standard language has become highly controversial after the rise of the postmodernist paradigm. This article traces the roots of the concept in the studies of a group of European linguists who inquired into the spread of “common languages” and related it to the processes of modernization and the role of social elites and urban centers during the 1920s. It then reviews the central role it played in the studies on nationalism and nation-building after 1945 and discusses how the focus on structural, macro-historical processes as determinants of the emergence of standard languages came to be abandoned in classical and postmodernist approaches to language standardization. Finally, it suggests that Antonio Gramsci’s insights on the “language question” in Italy should be read on the background of the early research on common languages and suggests that a reconsideration of macro-historical approaches could contribute to the understanding of the spread of Global English.

This article reviews Language Rights and the Law in the European Union978-3-030-33011-8$ 59.99

This article reviews Diversifying Family Language Policy£ 14.00

This article reviews The rise of English: Global politics and the power of language