English 401
Ron Strickland
Sept. 8, 1999
Critical Summary of Journals in Linguistics
In a sense, the academic field of linguistics is only about 100 years old--at least that's
when the field began to take on the "scientific" orientation in which its scholarship might
be recognized today. And Anglo-American scholarship in linguistics is of even more
recent provenance. I will discuss some of the key contemporary journals that publish
scholarship in English in the field below (much important linguistics research is
published in other languages). But first, it is necessary to mention the historical
linguistics of the 19th century, which preceded modern linguistics. Unlike modern
linguistics, which is concerned with describing and analyzing language patterns and their
relationships to thought and communication in a setting isolated from historical change,
19th-century historical linguistics was preoccupied with tracing the geneaologies of
modern languages to their pre-historic origins. After Saussure's structuralist intervention-after his argument that language must be looked at in a synchronic rather than a
diachronic view in order to understand how meaning is made--historical linguistics was
generally ruled out of the discipline. Modern linguistics research divides along the lines
described by Finegan--between those anthropological linguists and sociolinguists for
whom "languages are quick studies in the social structures of human communities and the
mainstay of social interaction" and those cognitive linguists and psycholinguists for
whom "Language is primarily a facet of the human mind" (Gibaldi, p. 3).
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 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."
Linguistic Inquiry
Founded in the late 1960's Linguistic Inquiry is published at MIT (Massachusetts Institute
of Technology), and it is the major site for publishing 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. Sample essays and abstracts can be found on the web at
http://mitpress.mit.edu/LI.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
IJSL is published by Mouton de Gruyter, and edited in Israel. 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 commissionedd, or come as a result of a relatively long lead time "callfor-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 research, but 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.