“THE LEGACIES OF BLACK LIVES MATTER: Language,communication,and social psychological perspectives toward social justice”

SPECIAL ISSUE (S.I.):

Full Articles, Research Reports (3K text), and brief interpretive social commentaries (1.5K) from an LSP perspective submissions are currently being processed, with the final deadline of April 1, 2021.

Guest Editors: Howard Giles (University of California, Santa Barbara), Natasha Shrikant (University of Colorado, Boulder), and Shardé M. Davis (University of Connecticut)

Guest Editorial Board (to date): Liz Jones; Antonis Gardiokitis; Rachyl Pines; Cindy Gallois; Jessica Gasiorek; George Ray; Walid Afifi; Karen Tracy; Jake Harwood; Rahul Sambaraju; Esther Ajiboye; Wei Sun; Elizabeth Desnoyers-Colas; Lauren Hall-Lew; Travis Dixon; Tianna Cobb; Muniba Saleem; Anastacia Kurylo.

After a string of violence against Black bodies, including the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery ¹ , the weaponization of dialing 911 and white women’s tears as an assault against bird watcher Christian Cooper, and the wrongful shooting of Breonna Taylor, the murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers on May 25^th, 2020 was the final affront that spurred a profound visceral reaction from Americans nationwide. Another tragic death in a long line of police murders of innocent Black civilians (such as Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Kathryn Johnston, Korryn Gaines, Tanisha Anderson and many others ² ) and occurring during the spread of COVID-19 which is disproportionately affecting Black and Brown lives ³ , Floyd’s murder triggered widespread, passionate, ongoing protests across the USA and internationally. Compared to previous Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that included mostly Black protestors, present day BLM protests are marked by racial diversity, particularly by participation of many White protestors ⁴ . Protestors are making vociferous demands for social justice, significant police reforms, and cultural transformations designed to subvert longstanding, pervasive white supremacy and anti-Black racism. Whereas some support the protests and are hopeful for social change, others are more skeptical, and still others criticize protests as violent and unnecessary. The unjust murders against Black bodies, the ensuing protests, and the discourses surrounding them highlight the complexities in racism and social change.

JLSP is committed to understand, learn from, and enable change from our sub-disciplinary perspective. To this end, we invite submissions that highlight how LSP approaches can reveal ways that racism, social justice, and social change appear in everyday language and communication and submissions that illustrate ways LSP approaches can be used to address and, most importantly, remedy these social problems. How do communities discuss, define, or ask for social change? How is language symbolically impacted in these processes as a tool to uphold structural racism or to promote social justice? Topics of focus could include, but are not limited to:

the role of social media in building civil rights movement support

language use by protestors, activist, and organizers

conversations about racism and activism in families

social justice, emotion, and language use

language and (anti-Black) racism

language and intersections among racism, transphobia, and/or homophobia

language and race in police and/or legal interactions

analysis of (news) media discourse

language of allyship, solidarity, victimhood

language of competitive victimhood

the diffusion of responsibility and bystander effects

**We seek studies that analyze the above or related topics in United States and/or international contexts**

Potential authors should submit a letter of intent featuring a description of the design, methods of analysis, and hypotheses or research questions at their earliest convenience (~1500 words). For their part, prospective commentators should articulate matters such as the social issues, incidents and events, and phenomena they will be rhetorically addressing. Such letters of intent are encouraged so that the editors can plan for coherence within the issue (or perhaps a subsequent S.I.). After peer-review, the S.I. will be published in late 2021 or early 2022. Please send a letter of intent and/or questions regarding the S.I. to all the 3 of the Guest Editors: HowieGiles@ucsb.com, natasha.shrikant@Colorado.EDU, and sharde.davis@uconn.edu.