Submissions

Author Guidelines

The editors of Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito (LL/LD) invite original contributions from researchers, academics and practitioners alike, in Portuguese and in English, in any area of forensic linguistics / language and the law.
The journal publishes articles, book reviews and PhD abstracts, as well as commentaries and responses, book announcements and obituaries.

Articles vary in length, but should normally be between 4,500 and 8,000 words.
All other contributions (book reviews, commentaries, responses and obituaries) should not exceed 1,200 words.
Articles submitted for publication should not have been previously published nor simultaneously submitted for publication elsewhere.

All submissions must be via the journal's website.
Authors should indicate the nature of their contribution (article, book review, commentary, response, book announcement or obituary).

Before submitting an article, visit the journal's website to access further information on the submission process, authors’ guidelines and journal templates.

Contributions must be in English or Portuguese.
Authors who are not native speakers of the language of submission are strongly advised to have their manuscript proofread and checked carefully by a native speaker. 

All articles submitted for publication will be refereed before a decision is made to publish.
The journal editors will first assess adherence both to the objectives and scope of the journal and to the guidelines for authors, as well as the article's relevance for and accessibility to the target audience of the journal.
Articles will subsequently be submitted to a process of double blind peer review.
For this reason, the name of the author(s) should not appear anywhere in the text;
self-referencing should be avoided, but if used the author(s) should replace both their own name and the actual title of their work with the word `AUTHOR.

The articles should be accompanied with a title and an abstract of no more than 150 words in the language of the article and, if possible, in the journal's other language as well.
The abstract should also include up to five keywords.
Contributions should be accompanied the name, institutional affiliation and email address(es) of the author(s). The abstract should also be included in the required field.

The author(s) may be required to revise their manuscript in response to the reviewers' comments.
The journal editors are responsible for the final decision to publish, taking into account the comments of the peer reviewers.
Authors will normally be informed of the editorial decision within 3 months of the closing date of the call for papers.

Articles should be word-processed in either MS Word (Windows or Mac) -- using one of the templates provided -- or LaTeX.
The page set up should be for A4, with single spacing and wide margins using only Times New Roman 12 pt font (also for quotations and excerpts, notes, references, tables, and captions).
PDF files are not accepted.
Where required, the following fonts should be used for special purposes: 

1. Concordances and transcripts should be set in courier;
2. Phonetics characters should be set in an IPA font (use SIL IPA93 Manuscript or Doulos);
3. Special symbols should be set in a symbol font (as far as possible, use only one such font throughout the manuscript);
4. Text in a language which uses a non-roman writing system (e.g. Arabic, Mandarin, Russian) may need a special language font;
5. Italics should be used to show which words need to be set in italics, NOT underlining (underlining should be used as a separate style in linguistic examples and transcripts, where necessary).

The article should be divided into unnumbered sections, and if necessary subsections, with appropriate headings.
Since the journal is published online only, authors can include long appendices, colour illustrations, photographs and tables, as well as embed sound files and hyperlinks.

Figures, tables, graphics, pictures and artwork should be both inserted into the text and provided as separate files (appropriately named and numbered), in one of the main standard formats (JPEG/JPG, TIFF, PNG, PDF).
They should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi, be numbered consecutively and contain a brief, but explanatory caption.
Captions should be placed after each table, figure, picture, graphic and artwork in the body of the text, but not in the artwork files.
Where applicable, tables should provide a heading for each column.

Transcript data should be set in a Courier typeface, numbered by turns, rather than lines, and should be punctuated consistently.
Where elements need to be aligned with others on lines above or below, use multiple spaces to produce alignment.
Transcripts should be provided as separate image files (e.g. JPEG/JPG, TIFF, PNG, PDF), named according to the transcript number.

Abbreviations should be explained in the text, in full form.
They should be presented consistently, and clearly referred to in the text.
Times New Roman 12 pt should be used whenever possible, unless a smaller size font is necessary.

Endnotes are preferred to footnotes but even so should be kept to a minimum.
When used, they should be numbered consecutively and consistently throughout the article, starting with 1, and listed at the end of the article, immediately before the References.

Manuscripts should clearly indicate the bibliographic sources of works cited.
The authors must ensure that the references used are accurate, comprehensive and clearly identified, and must seek permission from copyright holders to reproduce illustrations, tables or figures.
It is the responsibility of the author(s) to ensure that they have obtained permission to reproduce any part of another work before submitting their manuscript for publication.
They are also responsible for paying any copyright fees that may be charged for the use of such material.

Citations in the text should provide the surname of the author(s) or editor(s), year of publication and, where appropriate, page numbers, immediately after the quoted material, in the following style:
Coulthard and Johnson, 2007; Coulthard and Johnson (2007); Coulthard and Johnson (2007: 161).
When a work has two authors, both names should be referenced each time they are cited.
When there are more than two authors, only the first author followed by et al. should be used (Nolan et al. (2013)).
The author, date and page can be repeated, if necessary, but 'ibid' and 'op. cit.' must not be used.
When citing information from a particular work, the exact page range should be provided, e.g.:
Caldas-Coulthard (2008: 36--37), NOT Caldas-Coulthard (1996: 36 ff.).

Quotations should be clearly marked using quotation marks.
Long quotations should be avoided.
However, when used, quotations of over 40 words in length should be set as a new paragraph; the extract should be left and right indented by 1 cm and set in a smaller font size (11 pt).
The citation should follow the final punctuation mark of the quotation inside brackets.
No other punctuation should be provided after the citation, e.g.:

The linguist approaches the problem of questioned authorship from the theoretical position that every native speaker has their own distinct and individual version of the language they speak and write, their own idiolect, and the assumption that this idiolect will manifest itself through distinctive and idiosyncratic choices in speech and writing. (Coulthard and Johnson, 2007: 161)

If author and date are used to introduce the quote, only the page number(s) preceded by ‘p.’ will appear at the end of the quotation:

As was argued by Coulthard and Johnson (2007):

The linguist approaches the problem of questioned authorship from the theoretical position that every native speaker has their own distinct and individual version of the language they speak and write, their own idiolect, and the assumption that this idiolect will manifest itself through distinctive and idiosyncratic choices in speech and writing. (p. 161)

Quotations must be given in the language of the article.
If a quotation has been translated from the original by the author(s), this should be indicated in an endnote where the original quotation should be provided.

A list of References should be placed at the end of the article.
The References section should contain a list of all and only the works cited in the manuscript, and should be sorted alphabetically by the surname of the (first) author/editor.
Multiple publications by the same author(s) should be sorted by date (from oldest to newest).
If multiple works of one author in the same year are cited, these should be differentiated using lower case letters after the year, e.g. 1994a, 1994b, and not 1994, 1994a.
Book publications must include place of publication and publisher.
Page numbers should be provided for chapters in books and journal articles.
In addition, the volume and issue number must also be given for journal articles, and the name of journals must not be abbreviated.
Reference URLs should be provided when available.
When cases and law reports are cited, these should be provided in a separate list following the References.

To summarise the following style guidelines should be followed, including the capitalisation and punctuation conventions: 

Books:

Coulthard, M. and Johnson, A. (2007). An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence. London and New York: Routledge.

Mota-Ribeiro, S. (2005). Retratos de Mulher: Construções Sociais e Representações Visuais no Feminino. Porto: Campo das Letras.

Chapter in a book:
Machin, D. & van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Branding the Self. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard and R. Iedema (eds) Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse and Contested Identities. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Journal article:
Cruz, N. C. (2008). Vowel Insertion in the speech of Brazilian learners of English: a source of unintelligibility?. Ilha do Desterro 55, 133--152.

Nolan, F., McDougall, K. & Hudson, T. (2013). Effects of the telephone on perceived voice similarity: implications for voice line-ups. The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 20(2), 229--246.

Dissertations and Theses:
Lindh, J. (2010). Robustness of Measures for the Comparison of Speech and Speakers in a Forensic Perspective. Phd thesis. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg.

Websites:
Caroll, J. (2004). Institutional issues in deterring, detecting and dealing with student plagiarism. JISC online, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/briengpapers/2005/pub_plagiarism.aspx, Accessed 14 November 2021.

The main author of each contribution will receive proofs for correction.
Upon receiving these proofs, they should make sure that no mistakes have been introduced during the editing process.
No changes to the contents of the contribution should be made at this stage.
The proofs should be returned promptly, normally within two weeks of reception.

In submitting an article, authors cede to the journal the right to publish and republish it in the journal's two languages.
However, copyright remains with authors, in accordance with the copyright notice below. Thus, if they wish to republish, they simply need to inform the editors.