Language & Communication
Journal Data
| Type | JOURNAL |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Elsevier BV |
| ISSN | 0271-5309 / 1873-3395 |
| Scopus | 23083 |
| OpenAlex | S195343931 |
| MAG | 195343931 |
| Website | https://www.journals.elsevier.com/language-and-communication |
| Total publications | 1.481 |
| Coverage period | 1981 - 2026 |
| Country | GB |
| Language | EN |
| Indexing | Scopus indexed |
| Cited by | 7.650 |
| Impact factor | 1.295 |
| SJR | 0.626 (Q1) |
| SNIP | 1.373 |
| CiteScore | 2.8 |
| h-index | 31 |
| i10-index | 174 |
| 2-year mean citedness | 0.4711 |
| Female authorship share | 53.1% |
Language & Communication is a journal dedicated to the study of language and communication. Linguistic anthropology is a core subfield of anthropology, making this journal highly relevant to the broader discipline. It scores a 4 as an anthropology subfield venue
Communication · Linguistics and Language · Social Psychology · Experimental and Cognitive Psychology · Child and Animal Learning Development · Digital Communication and Language · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Diverse Scientific and Economic Studies · Educational Robotics and Engineering
Between tradition and transition: Language use and identity among K’iche’ Maya migrants in Austin, Texas
This article examines how K’iche’ Maya migrants in Austin, Texas negotiate language use and self-identity in a multilingual diaspora context. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with five K’iche’-speaking migrants, the study analyzes everyday communicative events. Using linguistic boundary-making, the article demonstrates how language is used in constructing inclusion and solidarity. In restaurant kitchens and other workplaces, K’iche’ serves as a …
The language of hip-hop: A corpus analysis
Academic research on rap lyrics remains underdeveloped despite the cultural significance of hip hop. To fill this gap, this corpus linguistics study investigated lexical patterns in a corpus of American rap lyrics. An approximately one-million-token corpus was compiled from 1,600 songs released between 1979 and 2019, allowing for the analysis of vocabulary and language change over time. Attention was given to methodological issues that affect cor…
The changing Journey: Diachronic metaphorical framing and institutional communication in Hong Kong English (1997–2024)
‘Like a light switch that is on and off at the same time’. A content analysis of signaled metaphors for quantum science and technology in Dutch newspapers
Quantum science and technology is an emerging field of research expected to have a transformative impact on society. Its inherent complexity and counterintuitive nature, however, may pose a barrier to communication with general audiences. Metaphors can play an important role in bridging the gap between abstract quantum concepts and public engagement. Yet, no research to date has systematically examined which metaphors are used in communication ab…
Misunderstanding as a structural outcome of communication: Laziness and interpretive freedom in specification and interpretation
Ending the VAR protocol: How referee joint decisions become final in football
This study explores how Video Assistant Referee (VAR) protocols are closed in professional football. Drawing on 107 recordings released by the Turkish Football Federation in 2024–2025, it uses ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to investigate how referees and VAR officials turn video reviews into final decisions. Analysis reveals a sequence: participants treat evidence as sufficient, the referee formulates a decision, the VAR ratifies it …
How Facebook changed indirectas: Critiquing leaders and managing alterity online among Shipibo-Konibos
Rethinking language through child-wor(l)d sociolinguistics
Sonic borders: Sound, governmentality and migration
The role of sound as a sensorial weapon in the governmentality of migration has received little attention. This article examines how sound functions as a technology of border control and, conversely, how refugees living in alternative housing, i.e. squats, resist via their own sonic practices to contest border regimes. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in Athens (2018 and 2020), combined with an analysis of textual resources including human ri…
Languaging anti–East Asian racism: Examining raciolinguistic, embodied, and status-based slurs on Twitter over fourteen years
Referring and demonstrating: “Musical Phrases” as Interactional Resources for Achieving Intersubjectivity in Rock Band Rehearsals
A cross-linguistic and pluricentric analysis of address patterns in automobile brand websites: Swiss Italian is not like any other
Pragmatic variation in pluricentric languages is an area of increasing research interest, although little explored to date in the case of Italian (and even less so in the case of marketing). Examination of a corpus of French, German and Italian car brand websites across language varieties shows patterns of (in)formal address pronoun use in Italian in Italy and Switzerland are very different: informal tu prevails in Italy, while in Swiss Italian a…
And-prefaces in aviation communication: A conversation analytic investigation of non-standard turn beginnings in air traffic control/pilot interactions
Nonstandardized turn beginnings may occur in scripted aviation communication. • And -preface use displayed an orientation to technologically mediated radio context. • And -prefaces in first contacts and summonses marked discontinuity with prior turns. • And -prefaces facilitated repair, task completion announcement, and discontinuity
“An invitation to the Traitor's camp? No thanks”: “No thanks” in comments on politicians' Facebook posts
Roy Harris and the liquidation of ‘languages’ in new sociolinguistics
New sociolinguistics is characterized by a liquidation of ‘languages’. Over the last two decades, socially interested critical scholars of language have reworked handed-down notions of individuate – ‘bounded’, ‘discrete’, ‘named’, ‘countable’– languages. A ‘language’ in new sociolinguistics is now commonly viewed as a second-order (language ideological) construct, rather than a first-order (self-contained) entity. In this article, we explore the …
The lexicon of rupture: Language, social reconfiguration, and pragmatic survival in the Gaza war
Performing expertise and emotion in AI risk discourse
This article examines how public messages about artificial intelligence (AI) are shaped through multimodal communication in TED Talks. Focusing on two 2023 talks on AI risks by Sasha Luccioni and Gary Marcus, the study explores how the speakers use language, visuals, and bodily performance to build credibility and engage with global audiences. Using Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we identify key “rich points”, moments where gesture, imagery, voic…
Perceptions of linguistic strategies in Chinese diplomatic discourse: A quantitative study of their impact on international communication
Contested encounters: Negotiating in-law status during a migrant's return to southeastern Senegal
Advancing linguistic justice in courtroom interpreting: A digital humanities approach to interpreter-mediated communication
Playful signs in the city: Toward a semiotics of transgression in urban linguistic landscapes
Urban residents move through linguistic landscapes where public signage frequently produces unintended meanings through error, contradiction, or spatial interaction. While ordinary signs aim to regulate and inform, some generate irony or humor, which are termed “playful signs”. This study asks what playful signs reveal about the dynamics of language and space in the city. Drawing on online sources and off-line fieldwork, it develops an analytical…
The semiotics of emojis & emoticons: Social hierarchies, platform preferences, and functional implications in digital discourse
The use of emojis and emoticons in digital communication has become an integral part of online interactions, allowing individuals to convey emotions and tone in a way that text alone cannot. This study examines usage patterns through the analysis of 391 participants aged 18–65, investigating platform preferences, social contexts, semantic awareness, and functional applications of digital paralanguage. The results indicate that, despite the widesp…
Language portraits in describing family language policy: How the activity setting shapes power dynamics
This paper investigates language portraits (LPs) as a methodological tool for studying family language policy across contrasting settings: an indigenous multilingual school (Colombian Amazonia) and a Franco-Chinese transnational household (France). Analysing ethnolinguistic cornering and child agency , we examine how formal/informal contexts in our study shape researcher-child power dynamics. Data include child-created LPs and interviews. Finding…
Interlocutor reference and competing social imaginaries in a predominantly Chinese Indonesian workplace in West Kalimantan
On the distinction between arguments and explanations
The distinction between arguments and explanations is both conceptually significant and pedagogically indispensable. Misidentifying arguments and explanations can lead to flawed evaluations and pedagogical confusion. However, while the traditional criteria (discourse function, acceptance of the statement, and acceptability of the reasons) offer some guidance, they frequently fail when applied to complex or ambiguous cases. I show that these crite…
Semiotics and the social analysis of material things
The social life of cultural value
Spaces of multilingualism
Recombinant selves in mass mediated spacetime
Transidiomatic practices: Language and power in the age of globalization
The file: Agency, authority, and autography in an Islamabad bureaucracy
The transformative limits of translanguaging
Psycholinguistic and social psychological components of communication by and with the elderly
The functions of formulaic language: An Integrated Model
From genericide to viral marketing: On 'Brand
Entextualization and the ends of temporality
Introduction: Acts of Alterity
Meet mediatization
Large and small scale forms of personhood
Excellence, leadership, skills, diversity: Marketing Liberal Arts Education
Subjected words: African linguistics and the colonial encounter
Dominance and accommodation in the conversational behaviours of same- and mixed-gender dyads
Language attitudes as a social process: A conceptual model and new directions
Racializing language, regimenting Latinas/os: Chronotope, social tense, and American raciolinguistic futures
Letters by phone or speech by other means: The Linguistics of Email
Antiracist, modern selves and racist, unmodern others: Chronotopes of modernity in Luso-descendants' race talk
How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words
Artefactual ideologies and the textual production of African languages
Cross-chronotope alignment in Senegalese oral narrative
Ethics, advocacy and empowerment: Issues of method in researching language
Communicating with computer programs
A Wittgensteinian perspective in linguistics
Theory, description and differences among linguists (or, what keeps linguistics from becoming a science)
Toward a semantic approach to terms of address: A critique of deterministic models in sociolinguistics
On language and communication
Reference, speakers and semantics
Communicational integration of reality and fiction
The message, the context and the medium
The garden path that historical linguistics went astray on
Creating interpretations for novel metaphors
Against effability
Kinetic patterns of individuality in acoustic and graphic productions
Guano of the mind: Puns in advertising
Intonation and meaning in conversation
Explanation by example
Realism and language change
Generative phonology in the dock
What we might learn from acquired disorders of reading
The demarcation of metaphor
Language acquisition, data compression and generalization
Co-existent declensional patterns in Hindi
The future machine: A study of the span of speakers' anticipations in conversation
The Shark Bay language and its implications for linguistic theory
Ellipsis and coordination: Norms and preferences
Language and communicational efficiency: The case of Tok Pisin