Journal of World Languages

Instructions for Authors

1. Submission
1.1 First submission of a manuscript
 Before submitting to the Journal of World Languages, please make sure that the topic of your contribution is
relevant to this journal.
Manuscripts should be submitted via the online submission and tracking system of the Journal of World
Languages at https://www.editorialmanager.com/rwol as a Word doc. file. This also applies to all resubmissions.
In case of problems, please contact the Editorial Office at jowl2021@163.com.
 Articles submitted under multiple authorship are reviewed on the assumption that all listed authors concur on
the submission and are responsible for its content; they must have agreed to its publication and have given the
corresponding author the authority to act on their behalf in all matters pertaining to publication. The
corresponding author is responsible for informing the coauthors of the manuscript status throughout the
submission, review, and production process.
 Journal of World Languages considers submissions of two types: research articles and book reviews. All
submissions must be original, neither submitted nor published elsewhere. The length of the manuscript should
be as follows: a research article should be no less than 8,000 words; a review of a newly-published monograph
or collection should normally be between 2,500 and 5,000 words in length.
 Manuscripts should be written in clear and concise English. Contributors whose native language is not English
should have their articles carefully checked by a qualified native speaker (preferably a linguist familiar with the
discourse of our discipline) before submission.
 Authors are advised to adhere as closely as possible to the De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet. Please pay
special attention to the following: numbering of section and subsection headings; in-text citations; references;
table/figure captions; linguistic examples and glossing, and check to ensure that all sections, subsections,
examples, tables, figures, notes, etc., are numbered consecutively without any gaps; please make sure that all
references in the reference list are complete and formatted consistently in accordance with the style sheet.
 Journal of World Languages operates a double-blind peer review process. To facilitate this process, you will be
required to submit the following 2 documents as part of the submission process: (1) An anonymous manuscript
that includes an abstract (200 words maximum), keywords (4–6), the main body of the text, and the list of
references. Note that this version will be sent to the peer reviewers, so please do not include your name and
affiliation in the article. (2) A version of the manuscript with a separate title page containing: 1) full title of the
article; 2) short title of the article of no more than 50 characters including spaces (for running head); 3) name(s)
of the author(s); 4) affiliation and correspondence address for each contributing author (department, university,
city, country, E-mail); 5) research funding and acknowledgments (if any); 6) bionote(s) (brief academic
biography of per author in 50–75 words).
 Authors are responsible for observing copyright laws when quoting or reproducing the material. Please be sure
to obtain written permission for the use of material (e.g. figures, maps) for which the copyright is owned by
others. Copies of any letters granting permission to reproduce illustrations from other sources must be included
with the manuscript.
1.2 Submission of revised/final manuscripts
 Revised manuscripts should be accompanied by a letter outlining a point-by-point response to all reviewers’
comments and/or rebuttal against each point that is being raised, detailing the changes made to the manuscript. If
it is the first revision, authors need to return the revised manuscript within 30 days; if it is the second revision,
authors need to return the revised manuscript within 14 days. Additional time for resubmission must be requested
in advance. If the above-mentioned deadlines are not met, the manuscript will be treated as a new submission.

 For accepted manuscripts, the authors will be required to submit the final version electronically and conform to
the journal style sheet (De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet). When uploading the final version, update all
anonymized references in the text and include the authors’ names and affiliations on the first page of the
manuscript. Please, also upload all Figures as a separate file with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, if possible.

1
2. Preparation of manuscripts
It is essential that contributors prepare their manuscripts according to the instructions and specifications
presented below.
2.1 Layout and organization
 The recommended document format is as follows: 2.5cm margins, 1.5-line spacing, and preferred font of Times
New Roman, size 12.
 Indent each new paragraph (except the first paragraph under a heading). (This does not mean that the text below
each numbered example should be indented as a new paragraph. Indent only text that actually begins a new
paragraph).
 Articles should be organized into the following sections:
 Title
 Abstract (200 words maximum)
 Keywords (4–6)
 Body of the article (including introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, etc.)
 Research funding (if any)
 Acknowledgments (if any)
 Abbreviations (if any)
 Appendix/Appendices (if any)
 References

2.2 Title
 The title should be informative, specific to the project, yet concise. Please bear in mind that a title that is
comprehensible to a broad scientific audience and readers outside your field will attract a wider readership.
Avoid specialist abbreviations and non-standard acronyms.
 Capitalize only the first letter of the first word and of proper nouns and adjectives (plus the first word after a
colon).

2.3 Abstract and keywords

Abstract
 A concise and factual abstract is required (of no more than 200 words). The abstract should state briefly the
research purposes and methods, a summary of the principal results and findings, and the major conclusion
drawn from the study.
 An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. References should
therefore be avoided, but if essential, they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list.
 Nonstandard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first
mention in the abstract itself.
Keywords
 Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and
multiple concepts (avoid, for example, “and”, “of”).
 Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These
keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

2.4 Section headings

 All headings begin to flush left and should follow the following numbering system:
1 First-level heading
1.1 Second-level heading
1.1.1 Third-level heading

2
 Pay special attention to the following:
✓ Section numbers should start with “1” (not “0”).
✓ The headings and subheadings should not exceed 3 levels. Please number the headings manually
instead of automatically.
✓ Boldface first-level, second-level, and third-level headings; Section numbers should not have full stops
after them (so “2”, “2.1”, “2.1.1” instead of “2.”, “2.1.”, “ 2.1.1.”);
✓ Capitalize only the first letter of the first word and of proper nouns and adjectives: e.g. “The capitalization
of titles in English” (not “The Capitalization of Titles in English”).
✓ The first paragraph under a heading should not be indented.

2.5 Footnotes
 Footnotes, not endnotes should be used. There should be no superscript note number in the article title or
abstract.
 Please use the automatic footnote insertion procedure, i.e. do not insert the footnotes manually.
 Footnote numbers in the running text should directly follow punctuation marks such as commas and full stops,
with no blank space:
e.g. It does no service to anyone in the long run if we pretend that semiosis – the making and understanding of
meaning – is a simpler matter than it really is.5

2.6 Quotations
 Short quotations (fewer than 60 words) should be run-on in the text and be enclosed in double quotation marks.
Punctuation should come after the quote and not within it, e.g. “quote, quote, quote”. Single quotation marks
enclose quotations within quotations.
 Longer quotations should be indented without quotation marks and preceded and followed by a blank line. The
citation to the source should be placed at the end of the quote following the punctuation.
 All quotations in languages other than English should be followed by a translation in square brackets.
 Always give the page number(s) for quotations.

2.7 Abbreviations and acronyms

 The use of abbreviations and acronyms is permitted so long as they are defined on the first mention in the
article.

2.8 In-text citation

Citations
 Brief citations are used within the text as follows:
✓ One author: (Fill 1998)
✓ Two authors: (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014)
✓ Three or more authors: (Quirk et al. 1985), but please do list all authors in the reference entry
✓ Several works by the same author with commas: (Stibbe 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2021)
✓ When multiple citations are listed in parentheses, please separate them by semicolons and list in
alphabetical order: (Croft 2001; Evans and Green 2006; Fillmore et al. 1988; Taylor 2002a, 2002b, 2003)
✓ Citation of an entire chapter: (Chomsky 1986: Ch. 3)
✓ Reprints: (Haugen 2001 [1972])

3
 Pay special attention to the following:
✓ Use the word “and” to conjoin author names in the running text (do not use ampersand [&])
✓ When citing more than one work by the same author/editor published in the same year, please differentiate
the works by using letters: Lakoff (2004a, 2004b, 2004c)
✓ In the case of quotations and thus indications of page numbers, a space is required between the colon and
the page number: Mathesius (1975: 103)
✓ Page number ranges should be given in full: (Hockett 1964: 140–145); please do not drop digits (e.g. 140–
5)
✓ Use En-dashes between numbers: Gibbs (2005: 200–201)
✓ Do not use the abbreviations ‘op. cit.’ or ‘oc.’, nor ‘ibid.’.

Cross-references
 References to section/subsection numbers within the article should include the capitalized word “Section”
followed by the section number: e.g. “see Section 4.2”.
 References to tables or figures within the article should include the capitalized word “Table” or “Figure”
followed by a number: e.g. “cf. Table 3”.

2.9 References
 All and only the works referenced in the text should be listed, alphabetically, in an unnumbered section entitled
“References”.
 Consult the following model reference list and use the same formatting conventions in your own reference list.
Pay special attention to the placing of full stops, commas, and spaces (or non-spaces)!
Book (authored work):
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.
Halliday, Michael A.K. & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. 2004. An introduction to functional grammar, 3rd edn.
London: Arnold.
Harré, Rom, Jens Brockmeier & Peter Mülhlhäusler. 1999. Greenspeak: A study of environmental discourse.
London: Sage.
Huang, Guowen & Ruihua Zhao. 2019. Shenme shi shengtai yuyanxue [What is ecolinguistics]. Shanghai:
Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Fawcett, Robert P. Forthcoming. The functional semantics handbook: Analyzing English at the level of meaning.
London: Equinox.

Book (edited work):

Jonthan J. Webster (ed.). 2013. Halliday in the 21st century: Vol.11 in the collected works of M.A.K. Halliday.
London: Continuum.
Fill, Alwin & Peter Mühlhäusler (eds.). 2001. The ecolinguistics reader: Language, ecology and environment.
London: Continuum.
Caffarel-Cayron, Alice, J.R. Martin & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.). 2004. Language typology: A
functional perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Contribution in an edited work:

Heller, Monica. 2001. Gender and public space in a bilingual school. In Aneta Pavlenko, Adrian Blackledge,
Ingrid Piller & Marya Teutsch-Dwyer (eds.), Multilingualism, second language learning, and gender
(Language, Power and Social Process 6), 257–282. Berlin: Mouton.

4
Note: Entries for articles in edited works should always include full bibliographical information for the edited
work. Abbreviating the entry is not acceptable.

Reprint:
Jakobson, Roman & Morris Halle. 2002 [1956]. Fundamentals of language, 2nd edn. Berlin: Mouton.

Journal article:
Neuman, Yair, Yotam Lurie & Michele Rosenthal. 2001. A watermelon without seeds: A case study in
rhetorical rationality. Text 21(4). 543–565.

Journal article also published electronically:

Inkelas, Sharon. 2008. The dual theory of reduplication. Linguistics 46(2). http://www.reference-
global.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/LING.2008.013 (accessed 10 June 2008).
Note: Publication date = year of online publication or year of the latest update. The date on which the URL was
accessed should be provided in parentheses at the end of the entry.

Special issue of a journal (cited as a whole):

Majid, Asifa & Melissa Bowerman (eds.). 2007. Cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective.
[Special issue]. Cognitive Linguistics 18(2).

Thesis/dissertation:
Jacq, Pascale. 2001. A description of Jruq (Loven): A Mon-Khmer language of the Lao PDR. Canberra:
Australian National University MA thesis.
Kim, Yong-Jin. 1990. Register variation in Korean: A corpus-based study. Columbia, SC: University of
South Carolina dissertation.

Translated title:
Huang, Guowen. 2017. Lun shengtai huayu he xingwei fenxi de jiading he yuanze [One assumption and three
principles for ecological analysis of discourse and behavior]. Waiyu Jiaoxue yu Yanjiu [Foreign Language
Teaching and Research] 49(6). 880–889.
He, Wei, Ran Gao & Jiahuan Liu. 2021. Shengtai huayu fenxi xinfazhan yanjiu [New developments of
ecological discourse analysis]. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press.
Note: Translate titles in languages other than French, German, Spanish, and Italian into English. The translation
should appear in roman, written in lower case, and should be placed in square brackets directly following the
italicized original title.

Paper presented at a meeting or conference:

Stibbe, Arran. 2019. Building an ecocivilization through language. Paper presented at the 4th International
Conference on Ecolinguistics, University of Southern Denmark, 12–15 August.
Sarangi, Srikant & Celia Roberts. 2000. Uptake of discourse research in inter-professional settings: Reporting
from medical consultancy. Paper presented at the International Conference on Text and Talk at Work,
University of Gent, 16–19 August.

5
 Pay special attention to the following:
Authors/editors
✓ Spell out the first name in full (unless the author him/herself uses initials only): e.g. Langacker, Ronald W.
but Halliday, M.A.K.
✓ If two or more initials are used, do not put a space between initials: e.g. Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen
✓ For two or more authors/editors, use the order ‘firstname surname’ for the second and any other
authors/editors; and use an ampersand (‘&’) before the final name in the list (with no comma preceding it):
e.g. Auer, Peter, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Frank Müller
✓ Use ‘(ed.)’ or ‘(eds.)’ for editor(s);
✓ For names with ‘van’, ‘de’, ‘von’, etc. as a lowercase separate element, alphabetize by the first uppercase
element.: e.g. Dijk, Teun A. van but Du Bois, John W.

Dates
✓ Do not use brackets around the date of publication.
✓ If a publication is forthcoming, refer to it as follows:
e.g. Fawcett, Robin P. Forthcoming. The functional semantics handbook: Analyzing English at the level
of meaning. London: Equinox.

Titles
✓ Use italics for volume (book, thesis/dissertation) titles; do not use italics or quotation marks around
article/chapter titles.
✓ Capitalize only the first word (plus proper names and the first word after a colon) of titles.
✓ Use italics for journal titles, and capitalize all lexical words.
✓ Use ‘edn.’ for edition: this follows the volume title, separated by a comma; do not use superscript in the
number: e.g. Introduction to functional grammar, 2nd edn.

Page numbers
✓ Give page numbers for all articles, in journals as well as in volumes; use En Dashes:
e.g. He, Wei. 2017. “Subject-predicate predicate sentences” in modern Mandarin Chinese: A Cardiff Grammar
approach. Linguistics 55(4). 935–977.
Michaelis, Laura A. 2009. Sign-Based Construction Grammar. In Bernd Heine & Heiko Narrog (eds.),
The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 155–176. Oxford: OUP.

Publication details
✓ Give publishers’ names in as brief a form as possible, e.g. ‘Blackwell’, not ‘Basil Blackwell’; ‘Mouton’,
not ‘Mouton de Gruyter’; ‘Benjamins’, not ‘John Benjamins Publishing Company’.
✓ Where publishers list more than one place of publication, include only the first.
✓ For titles published in the USA, the two-letter abbreviation for the state is given after the city in which the
publisher is based (a full list of these abbreviations can be found at:
https://www.ups.com/worldshiphelp/WS16/ENU/AppHelp/Codes/State_Province_Codes.htm)
e.g. Edelman, Gerald M. 1992. Bright air, brilliant fire: On the matter of the mind. New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Edelman, Gerald M. 2004. Wider than the sky: The phenomenal gift of consciousness. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.

6
2.10 Typeface, emphasis, and punctuation
 Italics should be used for:
✓ Words, phrases, and sentences treated as linguistic examples
✓ Foreign (non-English) words or expressions or when special emphasis is intended
✓ Titles of books, published documents, newspapers, and journals
✓ For probability (p), binominals
✓ Emphasizing a word or phrase in a quotation indicating [emphasis mine]

 Bold or underlining
✓ Bold or underlining may be used sparingly to draw attention to a particular linguistic feature within
numbered examples (not in the running text).
✓ Please keep the use of italics and boldface type to an absolute minimum.

 SMALL CAPITALS
✓ Use SMALL CAPITALS to gloss a grammatical category or a grammatical category morpheme in a
linguistic example.
✓ SMALL CAPITALS may also be used for drawing attention to key terms at first mention, single quotation
marks may also be used for this purpose.

 Quotation marks:
✓ Single quotation marks should be used for the translation of non-English words, e.g. cogito ‘I think’.
✓ Double quotation marks should be used in all other cases, i.e. direct quotations in running text.
✓ Please always use rounded quotation marks (“. . .”) not "straight" ones.
✓ A comma or period occurs inside double quotation marks; a colon or semicolon outside.
✓ All punctuation marks occur outside single quotation marks. Exception: In the English translation below a
non-English example, the punctuation mark occurs inside the single quotation mark.

 Dashes:
✓ Spaced En-dashes are used as parenthetical dashes (“text – text”).
✓ Unspaced En-dashes should be used between inclusive numbers, e.g. 153–159, 1975–1979.

 Brackets:
✓ Use ellipsis brackets to mark ellipsis [...].
✓ Do not use double round brackets: brackets within brackets should be square brackets, e.g. “(as introduced
by Bloomfield [1933: 123–125])”.

 In a list of three or more items, place a comma before the and or or joining the last two items.
e.g. [...] anaphors, pronouns, PRO, and pro.

2.11 Examples
 Example sentences are numbered consecutively throughout the article, and the numbers are placed in brackets;
please number them manually, i.e. do not use automatic numbering.

7
 Linguistic examples with interlinear glossing should follow the “Leipzig glossing rules”
(http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php) and should be presented as shown below. Align
the glosses using tables preferably or tabs (not the space bar). The example source should be listed on a new line
left-aligned with the example text.

 Pay special attention to the following:

✓ In numbering examples, avoid subdividing further into examples that begin with lowercase roman
numerals (i.e. avoid sequences like (5ai), (5aii), (5bi), (5bii)); Do not use a numbering system
involving primes (e.g. (5), (5’), (5’’)).
✓ Place any diacritics such as *, **, ?, ?? before the example itself, and align the first words of diacritically
marked examples with one another. Do not insert a space between a sentence diacritic and the first word of
the example.
(1) a.Chris appeared nervous to Mateo.
b. *To whom did Chris seem (to be) nervous?
c. **Who did it seem to that Chris was nervous?
d. ?Taylor can’t seem to run very fast to me.
✓ References to examples in the text should take the form “see (2a) and (2b)” with both number and letter in
brackets.
✓ In the case of morpheme glossing and morpheme translation, use tabs (not spaces) to align morphemes
vertically. Make sure to use SMALL CAPITALS for syntactic labels within glosses.
✓ In the case of morpheme translations, use italics for the source language, roman type for the target
language, and, if applicable, put single quotes around sentence paraphrases in the target language.

2.12 Tables and figures

 Tables and figures should be accompanied by appropriate captions. Captions are left-justified, and are
indicated as follows:
Figure XX: Title.
Table XX: Title.
i.e. the table or figure number is in bold and followed by a colon, while the title is followed by a full stop.

8
 Pay special attention to the following:
✓ Tables and figures should be numbered separately and consecutively throughout the text.
✓ Table captions should appear directly above the table, while figure captions should appear directly below
the figure.
✓ Please use sentence cases for table and figure captions, as well as for column heads.
✓ Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. For tables, there should be horizontal lines above
and below the column headings, and a third horizontal line at the bottom of the table. Normally, there
should be no vertical lines in tables.
✓ Both figures and tables should be freely movable in the text and should always be explicitly referred to in
the text (e.g. ‘as indicated in Figure 2’), and not by expressions such as ‘the following table’ or ‘the figure
below’.
✓ Do not end the text immediately preceding the insertion point for a table/figure with a colon, as the exact
positioning of these elements cannot be determined until after the manuscript has been typeset.

2.13 Research funding

 If you received funding through a grant for the research that is discussed in the article, provide details on this,
including funder name and grant number in a separate section called “Research funding” before (an
Acknowledgment section and) the References.
e.g. Research funding: This article was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers xxxx);
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA (grant number zzzz); and the United States Institutes of
Peace (grant number aaaa).
 It is not necessary to include detailed descriptions of the program or type of grants and awards.
 When funding is from a block grant or other resources available to a university, college, or other research
institution, submit the name of the institute or organization that provided the funding.

2.14 Acknowledgments
 Please add any acknowledgments (other than funding information, see above) in a separate, unnumbered section
entitled “Acknowledgments”, placed before the References section.
 List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g. providing language help, writing
assistance or proofreading the article, etc.). You must ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees
to be so named.

2.15 Sample Bionote

 Bionote: NAME received his/her PhD in AREA from UNIVERSITY and is currently TITLE at UNIVERSITY.
His/Her research interests include RESEARCH INTERESTS. His/Her most recent publications are TITLE
(YEAR). Address for correspondence: DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY, STREET, NUMBER, POSTAL/ZIP
CODE, CITY, COUNTRY. E-mail: xxx@xxx.xx

3. Book review guidelines

Authors of book reviews should follow all the instructions in this section and as well as the above guidelines.
1. Submission
Authors should submit their book review via the online submission and tracking system of the Journal of World
Languages at https://www.editorialmanager.com/rwol, log in or create an account, and select article type “Review”.

9
2. Format
Length
We would like to stress that single book reviews should be between 2500 and 5000 words. If two books related in
topic are being reviewed, the length should be no more than 8,000 words.
Heading
Reviews should be headed by information about the book being reviewed. Provide this information into a single
paragraph, following this format (including punctuation, caps, italics, bold, and spacing): author(s)/editor(s). year of
publication. title of book under review. place of publication: name of publisher, number of pages. ISBN.
e.g. Arran Stibbe. 2021. Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by, 2nd edn. London:
Routledge, xii+244pp. ISBN: 978-0-367-42842-6 (hbk).
Alwin F. Fill & Hermine Penz (eds.). 2018. The Routledge handbook of ecolinguistics. London: Routledge,
xviii+457pp. ISBN: 978-1-138-92008-8(hbk).
Reviewer information
The complete contact information for the reviewer(s) (name, institutional affiliation, regular postal address, and
email address) should be provided on a single line flush left following the heading and preceding the body of the
review (separated by spaces), as follows:
Reviewed by Christian Hopkinson, Department of Linguistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, E-mail:
christian.hopkinson@ox.ac.uk
The body of the review
In the body of the review, reviewers are asked to summarize the content of the book, assess its quality, and note its
contribution to the field. It may be structured in the following way.
 Description. The reviewer should provide some background and summarize the main objectives and the content
of the book.
 Evaluation. The reviewer should highlight the book’s strengths and weaknesses and offer a balanced and fair
assessment of the book concerned.
 Significance. The reviewer should describe in what way the book constitutes a contribution to the field, draw
comparisons with other works in the same area of interest, and define the readership who will be interested in
the work.
References
 References should be made to other scholarly work which is relevant to the claims made in the book(s) under
review.
 References should be formatted according to the De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet.
 Page citations are used within the texts as follows: (p. 36), (pp. 133–136)

4. Peer Review
All submitted manuscripts will be first reviewed by the editors and/or member(s) of the Editorial Board to ensure
thematic fit and sufficient quality. If a manuscript is considered appropriate for review, it will be sent out to a
minimum of two reviewers. Usually, authors will receive an editorial decision within three months after submission.
The review process is double-blind: Reviewers are not disclosed to authors, and authors are not disclosed to
reviewers.

5. Proofs
After final acceptance, authors will receive PDF page proofs for correction, which must be returned by dates given in
the publication schedule.

6. Offprints
Upon publication, authors will receive electronic offprints (in PDF format) of their contributions. Guest editors of
special issues will receive complimentary print copies of the issue.

10