20 years of critical inquiry in language studies

Abstract

This year, the international journal Critical Inquiry in Language Studies (CILS) publishes its 20 volume, marking twenty years of contribution to critical scholarship in the broad, interdisciplinary field of language studies. Launched in 2003 as the flagship journal for the International Society for Language Studies (ISLS), the journal was conceptualized to create a venue, at that time largely lacking, in critical perspectives on languages, language education, and related research through a peer-reviewed publication. Founding editors Timothy Reagan and Terry A. Osborn worked closely with authors to disseminate works to further the aims of critical pedagogy and social justice. Reagan and Osborn approached Naomi Silverman, then an editor at Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, proposing the journal and her support of the project was unwavering. At the outset, the editors were responsible for copyediting and even typesetting the journal, saving costs because they believed so strongly in the aims of the organization and the need for the journal. After ten years, Reagan and Osborn stepped aside as Paul Chamness Iida assumed the journal’s leadership, which continued until 2020 (see tribute to Paul published in this journal, Mikulec & Wooten, 2022). CILS, under the auspices of ISLS, comprises a volunteer-based organization of scholars committed to grassroots effort to bring together critical, interdisciplinary, and emergent approaches to language studies. For two decades, the organization and the journal have led global discourses on language and communication relating to equity, equality, and social justice. Drawing on critical social theories to connect linguistic and social issues, CILS has contributed significantly to carving out a field of heterogeneous research and scholarship in critical language studies. This area of inquiry has grown rapidly in recent decades, drawing on related fields of critical language awareness (CLA), critical discourse analysis (CDA), critical discourse studies (CDS), critical applied linguistics (CAL), and critical sociolinguistics, including linguistic anthropology, interactional sociolinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics. As a volunteer-based, nonprofit organization, ISLS met with immense financial challenges brought about by pandemic-related issues. Such barriers have exacerbated and intensified, exposing critical scholars and the communities they work with to magnified social and economic inequities. In these precarious circumstances, ISLS operations wound down in 2022. CILS now operates as an independent journal published by Taylor and Francis. It continues to uphold the inaugural goals and objectives of CRITICAL INQUIRY IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 2023, VOL. 20, NO. 1, 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2023.2188808