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Editorial project

The unity and specificity of the review GLAD! lie within its dual perspective on gender / sexualities and language. These three key terms can act both as objects of study or be wielded as epistemological "lenses". This intersection between gender, sexualities and language thus requires a critical approach which allows for an exploration of each of these dimensions.

A critical understanding of language

By critical understanding of language we mean a comprehension of language as complex material, i.e., non-transparent, polysemic and heterogeneous. Gender studies allow us to re-examine discourses, linguistic structures and their interactions in light of ideology, to uncover how these linguistic materials are shaped by relationships of power, domination and subversion, but also how these same materials in turn act on ideologies. Moreover, feminist studies has opened the way to a reflection on the situated dimension of the production of discourse - and the knowledge conveyed by it, which, on the one hand, allows us to rethink the theories of language and discourse as necessarily anchored in their production context, but also to highlight marginal or marginalised discursive productions . This permits us both to reflect on the constitution of disciplines around language with the critical eye of feminism in order to renew our analytical tools, as well as to nourish and pursue dialogical approaches to language understood as a constitutive space of the social reality.

A critical understanding of gender and sexualities

A critical understanding of gender and sexualities also involves grappling with gender, or rather the different discourses of gender and sexualities, in their ideological dimensions. The journal thus adopts a definitely constructivist stance in its approach to gender and seeks to question the essentializing logics at work within linguistic and gender analyses. Moreover, by interrogating both gender itself as a divided between the masculine and the feminine, as well as the different gender ideologies in their inter-relational dimension, the aim is to uncover the discursive and linguistic matrices of these ideologies, and to trace the genealogies of bi-categorization in the light of power and resistance relationships. As such, the discursive practices of minoritized groups and/or individual subjects (gendered, sexualized)—insofar as they create "gender disturbances" and reconfigure power relations— remains at the core of the journal's interests as well as the critical analysis of the processes of domination.

Finally, a critical understanding of gender and sexualities seems, in our view, to imply the inseparability of gender from other social relations, notably class, race, age, (post)colonization etc., and thus allows for the introduction of approaches that have become essential to understanding social situations and attitudes.

The project of the journal is therefore to create a trifold space for multidisciplinary debate which considers power relations in linguistic analysis, the working dimension of language on gender categories, and a non-essentialist understanding of gender, thereby allowing a clear reading of the intertwining of the different power relationships. The aim is to explore the way in which language constructs, represents, performs, disrupts, subverts, makes possible or impossible relations between gender and sexuality, while taking into account what these analyses reveal about language and discourse.

Four editorial principles

Four principles guide GLAD!'s editorial policy : multidisciplinary approach, openness to new research approaches and young researchers, diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches, and finally a non-normative linguistic policy favoring the dissemination of ideas across borders and languages.

1. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches

Though this journal was initiated by a group of linguists, it seems important to us not to restrict its area to a single discipline. Rather, we wish to tackle the relationship between language and gender/sexualities through the productive association between linguists, anthropologists, philosophers, discourse analysts and literature and cultural studies scholars.

Multidisciplinary approach

Considering that research on language is not exclusive to linguistics alone, the journal welcomes any paper from any field that addresses language issues, in their linguistic, historical, moral, cultural, political, sociological, anthropological, economic, literary, artistic, etc. dimensions. In so doing, we aim to place research on gender and language within the aegis of human and social sciences, but also to make room for minoritarian or minoritized approaches and methods.

Interdisciplinary approach

By linking gender, sexualities and language, we seek to avoid disciplinary confinement. Inheriting from gender and feminist studies and from linguistics or discourse analysis, linguistic research on gender is interdisciplinary by its very nature. It is therefore a matter of developing approaches that put into question sex, gender, sexualities, discourses and languages from different disciplinary perspectives, simultaneously. Within this framework, gender and language are developed both as points of view and as research objects. Thus, the journal encourages an interdisciplinary perspective that promotes exchange and spreading of concepts, knowledge, study objects and methodologies across disciplines.

This matter of discipline is perhaps even more relevant to the subject of language, given that sociological and philosophical traditions are predominant in gender studies. Gender studies has indeed emanated from "within" these disciplines. Therefore there is a need for developing a twofold expertise on these issues, which goes beyond integrating gender as a variable in language, or simply viewing language as a gender dimension. The interdisciplinary perspective referred to here will encompass both the subfields of linguistics and the various disciplines of the human and social sciences as long as they are concerned with language and meaning. It is thus possible to understand language in its discursive, textual, morphological, syntactical, phonetical, literary, pragmatical, semiotical and other possible dimensions, and gender and sexualities in their relational, identity, structural, ideological, material and other possible dimensions.

The journal strongly supports texts that question disciplinary compartmentalization and foster the dissemination of knowledge and the creation of new spaces open to dialogue between disciplines. However, the journal is careful to avoid a "soft" interdisciplinary approach, which would dilute the scientific exigencies of each disciplinary framework.

Moreover, by subscribing to standpoint theory, the journal assumes that all observations are made within an ideological framework that can be analyzed (Burton, 1982; Mills, 1995). It is then a question of working on the possibility of an academic and feminist and/or queer writing by questioning the principles of neutrality and objectivity that can sometimes be demanded or claimed in academic writing.

2. New research and Junior scholars

Although the journal is not a space dedicated to junior scholars, new perspectives on research are particularly dynamic, with a growing number of PHD dissertations devoted to such approaches. Thus, the journal actively encourages the publication of such research from junior scholars, with the aim of disseminating the most recent work and innovative approaches which propose new frameworks, sometimes new fields and new theoretical crossroads that we think are worth highlighting.

3. A diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches

The journal is open to different theoretical and methodological approaches and does not represent one school of thought. Rather, it seeks to highlight the multiplicity of points of view, and to provide a wider overview of existing research, provided that an emancipating perspective implying a true account of situated knowledge is made clear.

4. Languages and Francophonie

Francophonie

The journal addresses the entire French-speaking community, from all continents, in all its plurality. Thus, French-speaking works focusing on areas other than France and studying different languages are most welcome.

Plurilingualism

Work on the French-language written in other languages may be considered, if peer-reviewing is available for these languages. Occasionally, the journal may publish a bilingual text. Submissions in French on any other language are welcome.

Translation

The journal offers translations into French innovative work or texts of reference on gender/sexuality and language issues, in order to help the a cross-pollination of ideas of across languages.

Language quality

The journal does not necessarily expect authors to have a "native" language proficiency. The only criteria required for submissions to be selected is a fluid understanding and scientific relevance.The journal engages to work with the authors of the selected articles to present their work in the appropriate French idiom.

Gender marking

The journal gives total freedom to authors to choose how to mark grammatical gender in their texts and strongly encourages exploratory orthographical processes to challenge the French binary grammatical system.

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