Call for papers

Journal of Child Language is seeking submissions for its upcoming special issue on 'Later language development'.

This special issue of the Journal of Child Language will focus on later language development, defined as language acquisition and use beyond early childhood, encompassing middle childhood through late adolescence. The issue will aim to advance our understanding of how language skills evolve, stabilize, or change over these years, including how they intersect with cognitive, social, and educational development and to what extent they depend on the environment. Eligible papers will have a primary focus on child/adolescent language.

Guest editors:

• Ciara O'Toole, University College Cork, Irelands
• Ana Lúcia Santos, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Topics within scope:

1. Developmental Trajectories: Studies on vocabulary growth, syntactic knowledge, discourse skills, and pragmatic competence during later language development and how these relate to each other over development.
2. Individual Differences: Research exploring the effects of factors such as socio-economic status, bi/multilingualism, language disorders, or neurodivergence (or factors mentioned in 3 and 4 below) on language outcomes.
3. Language and Cognition: Investigations into how language development relates to cognitive skills such as social cognition, metalinguistic awareness, executive function, memory, and reasoning in later childhood and adolescence. Note that the primary focus must be on language.
4. Social and Educational Contexts: Analyses of the role of peer interaction, formal education, or extracurricular activities in fostering language development.
5. Methodological Innovations: New tools or methods for assessing language skills in older children and adolescents to generate new insights and understanding of later language development.
6. Multilingualism: Studies examining language acquisition, attrition, or maintenance in multilingual speakers during these later stages of development.
7. Impact of Technology: Research on how digital communication, social media, or other technologies influence language development.
8. Role of Literacy: Aspects of reading development will be considered where language is considered as a primary outcome variable. 

Exclusions from scope:

1. Early Language Development: Studies that focus exclusively or primarily on language development in infancy and early childhood (birth to age 5) will not be considered unless they explicitly connect findings to later developmental stages.
2. Studies of second/ foreign language instruction in a classroom setting. Classroom learning in the context of migration to a new language community may be considered on a case-by-case basis, where the focus is on understanding naturalistic language processes.
3. Non-Language-Specific Studies: Research focusing on cognitive or social development without a clear focus on language is outside the scope.
4. Clinical Interventions: While studies on language disorders are within scope, articles that exclusively evaluate clinical interventions or treatments without broader implications for language development will not be included.
5. Animal or Computational Models: Work involving animal communication systems or computational models without direct human developmental relevance is excluded.

Goals of the issue

The special issue seeks to provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective on later language development, addressing gaps in the literature and fostering collaboration across fields such as linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, education, and neuroscience. Contributions are expected to draw clear connections between theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and practical implications for understanding how language skills develop and function in the later stages of childhood and adolescence.

Timeline and deadline for submissions

• Submission Deadline: 18 July 2025
• Revised Submission Deadline: 27 February 2026
• Publication Date: Autumn/Fall 2026.