[I-LanD Research Centre] Call for Papers I-LanD Journal - Special Issue (2025, n. 1): "Workplace Discourses in the (Post) COVID Era: Linguistic and Discursive Reflections on Well-Being"

Thu Jan 16 18:26:04 UTC 2025

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I-LanD Journal - Identity, Language and Diversity
International Peer-Reviewed E-Journal

Call for Papers for the Special Issue (1/2025)
Workplace Discourses in the (Post) COVID Era:
Linguistic and Discursive Reflections on Well-Being

This Special Issue of the I-LanD Journal aims at advancing linguistic research on workplace discourse by exploring the profound transformations in worker dynamics and organizational communication after the Covid pandemic. The issue will be edited by Laura Di Ferrante (University of Milan), Eric Friginal (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and Kim Grego (University of Milan).

Submission of abstracts
Authors wishing to contribute to this issue are invited to send a 300-word abstract (excluding references) of their proposed article in English in MS Word format with keywords (max. 6) and a short biosketch of the author(s) to the Editors of the special issue by 28 February 2025. Proposals should not contain the authors' name and academic/professional affiliation and should be accompanied by an email including such personal information and sent to workplace.wellbeing at unimi.it<mailto:workplace.wellbeing at unimi.it>. Please use as subject line "I-LanD Special Issue 1/2025 - abstract submission" and Cc the I-LanD Journal Editors at giuditta.caliendo at univ-lille.fr<mailto:giuditta.caliendo at univ-lille.fr> and mcristina.nisco at uniparthenope.it<mailto:mcristina.nisco at uniparthenope.it>. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be sent to authors via email by 15 March 2025. When an abstract is accepted, the full article should be submitted before 30 July 2025. The final article length should be between 7,000 and 8,000 words (references excluded from the word count).

Important dates:
- Submission of abstracts: 28 February 2025
- Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2025
- Submission of chapters: 30 July 2025
- Expected publication: December 2025

Description
The Covid-19 pandemic of the early 2020s has unexpectedly, suddenly and dramatically impacted workplace settings as diverse as corporations, public sector entities, and academic institutions. Socially impactful phenomena- such as the so-called 'quiet quitting' (reducing one's effort in the workplace to a minimum) and 'great resignation' (an unusually high number of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs, which saw a peak in 2021 following the pandemic) - emerged or expanded that signalled, at least, a growing uneasiness with one's workplace; at most, a painful discomfort, and that, with possibly no exceptions, required modifications of work routines. A number of contingencies and emergency practices were implemented to facilitate work flexibility, such as telework, distancing and online meetings, some of which were maintained after the end of the emergency, while others were discarded. Whenever those changes became permanent, they had to be regulated by the introduction of new workplace policies. The adjustment to the new conditions, during the emergency, was forced and quick; after the emergency, restrictions were gradually relaxed, allowing employers to potentially dedicate more time and effort to the definition of the post-Covid-19 work conditions. This special issue intends to investigate how the workplace discourse of the early 2020s has evolved and adapted against this backdrop. In particular, it invites contributions that explore the evolving linguistic, rhetorical, and narrative dimensions of workplace discourse during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Issue Editors would thus like to invite contributions on the discourse(s) of, but not limited to, the following topics:
- Corpus-based analysis of pandemic-related workplace narratives
- Evolution of organizational rhetoric before and after COVID-19
- Health and well-being discourse in the workplace
- Linguistic strategies in remote and/or on-site work policies
- Narrative construction of workplace identity in the (post-)COVID-19 era
- Quantitative and qualitative linguistic analyses of new vs. old workplace policies
- Quiet quitting and/or the great resignation
- The impact of the pandemic on different work settings (e.g. corporations, the public sector, the academia)

References
Badri, M., Al Khaili, M., Aldhaheri, H., Yang, G., Al Bahar, M., & Al Rashdi, A. (2022). Examining the structural effect of working time on well-being: Evidence from Abu Dhabi. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 6(1), 100317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2022.100317
Cohen A. (2021, May 10). How to quit your Job in the great post-pandemic resignation boom. Bloomberg Businessweek. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-10/quit-your-job-how-to-resign-after-covid-pandemic?leadSource=uverify%20wall
Daniels, K., Watson, D., Nayani, R., Tregaskis, O., Hogg, M., Etuknwa, A., & Semkina, A. (2021). Implementing practices focused on workplace health and psychological wellbeing: A systematic review. Social Science & Medicine, 277, 113888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113888
Grego, K. (2024). Communicating the well-being of employees in US and UK top universities during and after Covid-19. mediAzioni, 42, A44-A64. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1974-4382/19496
Hamouche, S. (2023). Human resource management and the COVID-19 crisis: implications, challenges, opportunities, and future organizational directions. Journal of Management & Organization, 29(5), 799-814. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.15
Heikkinen, S., Lämsä, A. M., & Niemistö, C. (2021). Work-family practices and complexity of their usage: a discourse analysis towards socially responsible human resource management. Journal of Business Ethics, 171(4), 815-831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04458-9
Ochoa, P., Lepeley, M. T., & Essens, P. (Eds.). (2019). Wellbeing for sustainability in the global workplace. Routledge.
Watermeyer, R., K. Shankar, T. Crick, C. Knight, F. McGaughey, J. Hardman, V.R. Suri, R. Chung and D. Phelan. (2021). 'Pandemia': a reckoning of UK universities' corporate response to COVID-19 and its academic fallout. British Journal of Sociology of Education 42(5-6): 651-666. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.1937058

More about the I-LanD Journal

Editors in chief:
Giuditta Caliendo (University of Lille) and M. Cristina Nisco (University of Naples Parthenope)

Advisory board:
Giuseppe Balirano (University of Naples L'Orientale)
Marina Bondi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)
Delia Chiaro (University of Bologna)
David Katan (University of Salento)
Don Kulick (Uppsala University)
Tommaso Milani (University of Gothenburg)
Margaret Rasulo (University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli")
Paul Sambre (KU Leuven)
Srikant Sarangi (Aalborg University)
Christina Schäffner (Professor Emerita at Aston University)
Vivien Schmidt (Boston University)
Stef Slembrouck (Gent University)
Marina Terkourafi (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Girolamo Tessuto (University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli")
Johann Unger (Lancaster University)

The I-LanD Journal (https://archivio.unior.it/ateneo/15279/1/i-land-journal.html) reflects a commitment to publishing original and high-quality research papers addressing issues of identity, language and diversity from new critical and theoretical perspectives. All submissions are double-blind peer-reviewed. In fulfillment of its mission, the I-LanD Journal provides an outlet for publication to international practitioners, with a view to disseminating and enhancing scholarly studies on the relation between language and ethnic/cultural identity, language and sexual identity/gender, as well as on forms of language variation derived from instances of contamination/hybridization of different genres, discursive practices and text types.

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