Call for papers for a special issue on “Language and Social Interaction,” likely to be submitted to Language in Society. Deadline: 150 word abstract only, 29 August 2025.
Special issue editor: Trudy Milburn (Southern Connecticut State University, USA)
In 1984, the journal then known as Papers in Linguistics agreed to publish a special issue on “The ethnography of communication: Twenty years later” (Winkin & Sigman, 1984). Research in this area expanded under a new umbrella term, “Language and Social Interaction.” By 2010, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz published The Social History of Language and Social Interaction Research. This edited volume encompassed the history of the sub-discipline LSI within Communication departments from the 1960s through the 1980s. The work was organized around the people, places, and ideas within research universities producing doctoral students. Of the original universities indicated, two continue to produce the majority of LSI scholars (UCLA and UMass), whereas others that were not on the original list (or in the volume’s review at that time) have developed. We can now find new LSI scholars from the University of Colorado Boulder, as well as institutions outside the U.S. including the University of Macau, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Loughborough University, among many others.
As university affiliations change, so too have scholarly association affiliations. For instance, LSI has dispersed membership across many divisions in our scholarly associations. Some of its scholarship has received awards in Environmental Communication, Health Communication, International and Intercultural Communication, Religious Communication, and so on. The sub-discipline has enjoyed cross-division attention in the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association. At the same time, LSI-specific bi-annual meetings have sprung up focusing on EC research (in Omaha Nebraska, New York NY, Helskini Finland, Denver Colorado); whereas other LSI-specific gatherings include participation across methods (LANSI, EMCA, etc.)
In addition, research practices have changed substantially over the past few decades. Initially, much of the data generated and analyzed were gathered from in-person field notes and recordings. As technology has evolved, and virtual spaces have arisen, research data have been added from multiple digital sites, chat rooms, zoom meetings as well as multiple online sources.
Furthermore, analytic techniques and methods have evolved. The methods that propelled this area into prominence have shifted from the participant observation of the ethnography of communication to the sequentially based micro-analysis of conversation analysis. These areas are now supplemented with other forms of digital data. Increasingly, scholars are turning to artificial intelligence large language models that can assist in interrogating ever broader patterns in large corpuses of communicative practices.
How has, and how will, LSI adapt to this shifting landscape?
This special issue will feature collaborative articles that review current practices that have shifted historic methods while featuring novel ways to approach some of our fundamental questions.
How is communication used to:
– Recognize who we are to one another?
– Create and sustain communities?
– Bridge (mis)understandings between people with different cultural systems?
– Enable us to continue building social worlds?
– Enact change?
NOTE: If this can be prepared in time for the 29 August deadline to propose special issues of Language in Society, that is where it will be submitted. If not (and it is a very short deadline), then it will be submitted elsewhere.
References:
Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2010) (Ed.). The social history of language and social interaction research. Hampton Press.
Winkin, Y., & Sigman, S. J. (1984). The ethnography of communication: Twenty years later. Papers in Linguistics, 17(1), 1–5.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 