Call for vol. 19 - no. 2, 2023

Linguí∫tica, the journal of the Graduate Program in Linguistics at UFRJ, invites researchers to submit, by July 15, 2023, papers for its issue on Valuing Diversity: In Defense of the Identity of Vulnerable / Minoritized Linguistic Communities.

Theme: Valuing Diversity: In Defense of the Identity of Vulnerable / Minoritized Linguistic Communities

Guest Editors: Ana Paula Quadros Gomes (UFRJ) and Beatriz Christino (UFRJ)

Submission deadline: July 15, 2023 Extended August 16, 2023  [closed]

Publication scheduled for August 2023

Brazil´s formative history has been marked by profound inequalities and flagrant injustices, which include the repeated violation of the linguistic rights of minority communities. Linguistic prejudice mainly affects peripheral identities, slums, rural areas, riverside dwellers, immigrants, and refugees. Discrimination against linguistic identity is cruelly disguised as meritocracy, defending “correctness” in the face of “errors”, generating enormous discomfort for those already excluded due to brutal social inequality, and leading to cracks in their self-confidence and to low linguistic self-esteem. Certain speech or writing “corrections” are made with the clear intention of silencing their target and discrediting their arguments. Fortunately, resistance movements are always present. Lately, native peoples have been intensifying their struggle for the recognition, appreciation, and maintenance of indigenous languages, building strategies articulated to realities such as the institution of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032), with a significant increase of indigenous representation in every sphere. Traditional communities, like the Quilombolas, have been claiming respect for their linguistic identity. Bill 577/22 recognizes Quilombolas´s speachs as languages. At the same time, the Brazilian LGBTQIA+ community has been facing a fierce resistance to the use of neutral language, an inclusion and visibility mechanism that has already become part in the European Union of the policy of governments and private institutions such, banks, international manufacturers, and service providers. Nevertheless, neutral language continues to be the target of hate speech in our country, which attacks falsely justified as “family defense” and “grammar defense”. Laws prohibiting it (more than 34) have been proposed in Brazil and some have even been enacted, despite being unconstitutional. In view of so many naturalized attitudes of disregard for linguistic rights, we invite authors of works addressing the appreciation of diversity to submit articles for this issue, aiming to support linguistic identities of vulnerable / minorized communities.