Critical Applied Linguistics, Language, and Power in Education: Call for Papers

The European Journal of Education and Language Review [EJELR], which I co-edit, invites papers for our upcoming issues. As I wrote in our last editorial, we envisage this journal as a space for opening up discussions about how language and language education connect with questions of power. If you feel that your work fits well with the journal’s scope and mission, what follows may be of interest to you. As a reminder, the EJERL is a diamond open-access journal: this means that the work you publish with us will not be behind a paywall, and you will not have to pay article processing charges. If you’d like an informal chat to discuss a potential submission, feel free to reach out to me!

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Call for papers

We live in fractured times. Acts of exclusion, and occasionally violence, rooted in fear of difference, the retreat of linguistic human rights in the face of technocratic, the deployment of linguistic ‘deficits’ as proxies for discrimination, and the positioning of multilingualism as threat all serve to remind us that language is never neutral. We are keenly aware that language is the medium through which fear is amplified, difference is essentialized, and hatred finds legitimacy. And yet we also take note of how it allows solidarity to be built, resistance to become possible, and alternative futures to be imagined (Steiner, 1998). Accepting that language does things in the world (Holtgraves, 2002) means that scholarship about language cannot stand apart from questions of justice, belonging, and democratic coexistence.

It is within this context that the European Journal of Education & Language Review (EJELR) positions itself: not as a neutral record of language and language education, but as a space for scholarship that takes the social consequences of our work seriously (Pennycook, 2021). Accordingly, the work published in EJELR recognises language users, teachers, and learners as people with plurilingual identities, vulnerabilities, and aspirations, navigating worlds where language learning intersects with class, race, gender, migration status, and —at times— trauma. Our commitment is to scholarship that foregrounds ethical responsibility, care, wellbeing, and social justice as core educational concerns, understanding that linguistic diversity is rarely neutral but rather accompanied by linguistic stratification and subordination (Piller, 2016).

Language, education, & social consequence

The European Journal of Education and Language Review (EJELR) invites submissions for articles that interrogate how language education and its informing disciplines (e.g., applied linguistics, language teaching psychology and education studies) connect with questions of power, inequality, identity, and social responsibility.

We are keen to receive submissions that:

• Describe language education as a site of social stratification, inclusion, and exclusion, and critically interrogate dominant narratives in language policy and language ideologies;
• Foreground the experiences of language users, teachers, and learners as plurilingual, multicultural people navigating intersections of class, race, gender, migration status, and trauma;
• Frame language teacher education and professional knowledge as ethically and politically situated, and reflect on questions of agency, accountability, and research literacy;
• Outline educational responses to migration, mobility, and linguistic diversity, and challenge deficit framings;
• Question technocratic, decontextualized approaches, and foreground ethical responsibility, care, safety, and social justice.

The journal explicitly welcomes submissions from early-career researchers, including doctoral candidates and scholars at the beginning of their academic trajectories. We recognise that transformative work often emerges from positions of professional precarity, and we are committed to a rigorous but constructive review process that supports the development of such scholarship, without lowering expectations of empirical rigour, conceptual clarity and methodological integrity.

Topics of Interest

EJELR welcomes empirical studies, conceptual and theoretical papers, methodological reflections, and critical reviews that open up new problem spaces. We encourage interdisciplinary contributions, provided that language and education remain central analytical concerns.

We are keen to receive submissions that speak to, and extend, debates around topics such as:

• Language education and social justice;
• Migration, citizenship, and linguistic rights;
• Multilingualism and translanguaging practices;
• Identity, belonging, and positioning in language learning contexts;
• Structural inequalities in language education access and participation;
• Critical examination of language policies and their consequences;
• Resistance to assimilationist and monolingual ideologies;
• Language teacher education for transformative practice;
• Under-researched linguistic communities and minoritized languages;
• Language and wellbeing in contexts of displacement;
• Action research and practitioner inquiry in socially-engaged language education.

Methodological Approaches

EJELR affirms epistemic diversity and welcomes a range of methodological perspectives (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, arts-based research, auto- and duo-ethnography, classroom-based inquiry, and other innovative approaches). We especially encourage research designs that amplify marginalised voices and challenge conventional research paradigms.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts must present original work not under consideration elsewhere and will undergo double-blind peer review. Authors should follow the journal’s author guidelines and adhere to ethical standards regarding research transparency, data protection, and responsible scholarly practice.

Informal queries regarding scope or suitability may be addressed to the editorial team via the In.

EJELR is a diamond open-access journal committed to making scholarship freely available to educators, researchers, and communities worldwide.

We look forward to reading your work!

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