Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Preparation of Manuscripts
In order to support our authors and streamline the submission process, Language in Society now provides simplified formatting guidelines for initial submissions. Only accepted manuscripts will be required to conform to the detailed requirements (provided under “Accepted Manuscripts” below), though authors are welcome to make use of the full formatting guidelines at the initial submission stage if preferred.
Initial Submissions
Manuscripts should generally not exceed 10,000 words in length including all notes, references, and appendices, as well as an abstract of no more than 150 words together with at least 3 keywords. All submissions should be typed in an easily readable font, 12-point size, and double-spaced throughout (including abstract, references, endnotes, and extracts). All pages must be numbered. Reviewing of articles will be anonymous as far as practicable, so please avoid undue self-identification in the manuscript.
Title Page: A separate title page should include the title of the article, the author's name, affiliation, full postal mailing address, email address, and competing interest declaration (see below for guidance on what this should look like).
Competing interests declaration - All authors must include a competing interests declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article. Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations. If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Titles should be worded so that part of them may be used as a running head of no more than 50 characters, including spaces.
Tables & Figures: For initial submission, tables and figures may be included in text. Figures should be of high enough quality for reviewing. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in color in the online version only, or whether they should appear in color online and in the print version. Charges apply for all color figures that appear in the print version of the journal. There is no charge for including color figures in the online version of the journal.
Footnotes/End Notes: Footnotes and end notes should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Information that is relevant to the article should normally be included in the body of the text, eliminating the need for notes. If used, notes should not contain phonetic symbols, statistics or tables, nor should they be used simply for bibliographical information. Their reference point in the text should be clearly indicated with a superscript number. The notes themselves should be numbered and should appear after any appendices and before the references list in the main manuscript file.
Language/Editing: Contributions written in English are welcomed from all countries. Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the editor and any reviewers. Cambridge offers a service which authors can learn about here. Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge published journal.
Accepted Manuscripts
Accepted manuscripts should be submitted as .doc files that can be opened in a Windows for PC system, as well as a .pdf file. Special fonts must not be used.
Automatic Formatting: All automatic formatting must be removed from accepted manuscripts; this includes autoformatted foot/end notes, section hyperlinks, URL hyperlinks, automatically inserted references, and all tables used to format text.
- Submissions should not use ANY kind of automatic numbering or cross-referencing, including note numbers, citations, or example numbers. This type of material usually cannot be converted to the specialized application used by the compositor and has to be manually redone by the copyeditor, which potentially introduces errors. All note numbers and notes should be typed as normal text.
- Hyperlinks should not be included in accepted articles, either to references or to examples. These are not useful when the article is printed and can cause great confusion if, for example, our format requires numbering something you have not numbered.
- Finally, the "Style" function in Word should not be used to apply formats to different parts of the document.
General Stylistics:
Spelling may follow either British or American conventions, but please be consistent.
Standard linguistic abbreviations are in upper case throughout e.g. AUX, NP.
Single rather than double quotation marks should be used for quotations, glosses (including translation meanings) and when words are used with a qualifying sense, as in referring to a 'gold standard' test. Double quotation marks should be used for reported speech. Put commas and sentence-final punctuation marks outside the quotation marks.
Cited words and phrases should be italicized (e.g. 'the word language').
IPA characters should be in the Doulos SIL Unicode font, which is available for download at http://scripts.sil.org. Any problems in using IPA characters are often resolved by changing to Cambria font.
Tables & Figures:Tables and figures must be uploaded separately. They should be labelled (e.g. Table 1, Figure 1) with a descriptive title. Please indicate in the text approximately where they should appear. Figures should be ready for photographic reproduction: titles, labels and details should be clear and large enough to remain legible after a 50% reduction. At the time of final file submission, contributors should confirm whether their figures should appear in color in the online version only, or whether they should appear in color online and in the print version. Charges apply for all color figures that appear in the print version of the journal. There is no charge for including color figures in the online version of the journal. If you request color figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
References: References are to be made in the text by giving in parentheses the name of the author, year of publication, and, where relevant, the page(s) referred to: (Eckert 2018:144–45). If the author's name is part of the text, use the form: Eckert (2018:144) maintained that . . . . When a work written by two or more authors is referred to, all names should be given in the first citation: (Borba, Hall, & Hiramoto 2025). The ampersand (&) is always used for two or more authors. For three or more authors, subsequent citations may use et al. (Borba et al. 2025). Separate works referred to in the same parentheses should be in chronological order separated by semicolons: (Wodak 2018; Lazar 2019; Pennycook & Makoni 2020), unless the author is the same, in which case a comma is used (Zimman 2014, 2017a, 2017b, 2020). Initials should be used before an author's name only when an article refers to more than one author with the same surname. Reference to a footnote or endnote is as follows: (cf. Irvine (2022:234, n. 7), for a clarification on a Peircean approach to language ideologies.)
1. Journal Articles
Lazar, Michelle (2019). Politics of the ‘south’: Discourses and praxis. Discourse & Society 31(1):5–18.
2. Magazine Articles
Ruiz, Richard (1992). Unwelcome mats. Harvard Magazine, July/August, 3235.
3. Entire Books
Eckert, Penelope (2018). Meaning and linguistic variation: The third wave in sociolinguistics. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
4. Book Chapters
Zimman, Lal (2014). The discursive construction of sex: Remaking and reclaiming the gendered body in talk about genitals among trans men. In Lal Zimman, Joshua Raclaw, & Jenny Davis (eds.), Queer excursions: Retheorizing binaries in language, gender, and sexuality, 13–34. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
5. Conference Papers
Wodak, Ruth (2018). “Post-truth and/or post-shame”: Right-wing populist discourse, politics and performance on frontstage and backstage. Plenary talk delivered at GURT 2018. Washington, DC.
6. Reprinted Articles
Clayman, Steven E. and Tanya Romaniuk (2011). Questioning candidates. In Mats Ekström & Marianna Patrona (eds.), Talking politics in broadcast media, 15–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Reprinted in Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Contemporary studies in conversation analysis, 297–314. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.