36.3619, Calls: Langue(s) & Parole - "Special Issue: Acquiring a New Language in Adolescence" (Jrnl)

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Subject: 36.3619, Calls: Langue(s) & Parole - "Special Issue: Acquiring a New Language in Adolescence" (Jrnl)

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Date: 23-Nov-2025
From: Cyrille Granget [cyrille.granget at univ-tlse2.fr]
Subject: Langue(s) & Parole - "Special Issue: Acquiring a New Language in Adolescence" (Jrnl)


Journal: Langue(s) & Parole
Issue: Acquiring a New Language in Adolescence
Call Deadline: 31-Mar-2026

The aim of this eleventh issue of the journal Langue(s) & Parole is to
bring together articles that focus on the situated process of language
acquisition by adolescents, a population that is largely
underrepresented in second language acquisition research. Of the 89
classroom studies that Collins and Muñoz (2016) identified in the
Modern Language Journal between 2001 and 2014, only 15, or 17%,
focused on adolescents in secondary education, compared to 75% on
adults. Adolescence will therefore be the focus of this edition and
understood not only as a period of life, but also as a set of specific
learning conditions in terms of exposure, socialisation and schooling
    A. Relevant fields of research 
Beyond the divide between ecological and experimental approaches, this
issue aims to bring together original studies on the processes of
learning and processing a new language during adolescence in two
distinct scenarios:
1. Learning a new language as part of ongoing multilingual education
in secondary schools (including during a stay in a country where that
language is dominant)
2. Learning the dominant language of the surrounding environment in a
resettlement country, through immersion and in educational settings
that are more or less inclusive.
The process of acquiring a new language can be approached from the
perspective of second language acquisition research, through
longitudinal or cross-sectional corpus studies and experimental
studies, or from the perspective of ethnographic approaches to
communication, through clinical or didactic case studies.
    B. The issue 
In research on second language acquisition, adolescence was initially
viewed as a ‘period’ of brain maturation during which learning becomes
‘critical’ in the sense that the stage of indistinguishability between
late and early learners becomes more difficult to achieve,
particularly in terms of phonology (Granena and Long, 2013). However,
this view of adolescence as a decisive age group has been qualified on
several occasions. Since language acquisition is a multifactorial
process, its timing, pace, and the resulting stages and uses can be
explained by a set of factors and compensatory mechanisms whose
complexity has yet to be studied (Dollmann et al. 2020, Birdsong 2021,
Köpke 2021). Very early on, Lambert and Gardner (1972), for example,
highlighted the role of motivation and attitudes in phonological
learning in schools. Other factors that influence the course and
outcomes of learning include the context of exposure, whether
immersive or academic, the intensity and quality of exposure in the
classroom (Collins and Muñoz 2016), the structural properties of the
languages in contact, general skills such as reading (Hwang, 2025),
the degree of literacy (Tarone and Bigelow 2005), cognitive functions
(memory, attention), teaching methodology (Hwang 2025, Bllaca and
Villareal 2025), and more generally the role of emotions at this key
age in life (Guedat-Bittighoffer and Dat 2018, Guedat-Bittighoffer
2024; Brunel 2020). Do adolescent behaviours and practices, whether in
terms of learning a new language, processing language or socialising
through language, not offer an ideal terrain for observing this
intertwining of social, cognitive, cerebral, emotional and cultural
determinants of learning?
    A. The areas, approaches and objects under consideration 
This 11th issue of Langue(s) & Parole has therefore chosen to bring
together studies on the acquisition of a new language by adolescents.
 - These may concern adolescents learning a new language in secondary
and compulsory education (see Soto-Corominas et al. 2020, Muñoz and
Cadierno 2021, Kopečková and Poarch 2022, Tskhovrebova et al. 2022,
Tragant and Muñoz 2023, Lücke et al. 2024, Dewaele et al. 2024).
 - Special attention will be given here to studies on the acquisition
of languages less widely studied than English.
 - Contributions may also focus on migrant adolescents, who are often
already multilingual and acquire a new language formally in language
classes and informally outside the classroom.
 - In both cases, studies focusing on adolescents with specific
learning differences (Kormos 2025) will be particularly appreciated.
 - Various observable aspects (lexicon, morphosyntax, phonology,
socio-pragmatics, among others) can be considered, including basic
communication skills or academic skills, in reception (reading,
listening comprehension) or production, oral or written.
 - The observed achievements can be discussed in light of various
contextual factors (type and volume of exposure, type of motivation,
language experience, previously acquired languages, literacy level,
among others).
In an ethnographic approach to communication, this issue may also
include case studies that reflect the variability of learner profiles
with different levels of academic ability (Hwang 2025), literacy
(Sosinski, 2020) or who have experienced multiple modes of schooling
(Mendonça Dias 2014, Winlund 2021.
 - We invite articles that describe and analyse the language practices
and uses of multilingual adolescents through various observation or
assessment tools, including clinical ones, such as Avicenne's ELAL
(Moro et al. 2018, Bossuroy et al. 2018).
 - Analyses of teaching and learning practices in language classrooms,
which are still poorly documented (see, however, Winlund 2020), may
also be included in this volume.
 - Finally, this issue of Langue(s) & Parole also aims to showcase
participatory research that gives voice to adolescents' perspectives
on their own experience of learning a new language.
Article Submissions and Deadlines:
Guidelines for submitting articles are available on the Language(s) &
Speech website:
https://revistes.uab.cat/languesparole/about/submissions.
Articles may be written in any Romance language or in English. They
must be submitted in Word format (.doc or .docx) and it is recommended
that the text not exceed 36,000 characters (including spaces between
characters). For more details, please consult the guidelines for
authors on the journal's submission page.
As this special issue is scheduled for publication in 2026, the
following schedule has been established:
 - Submission of articles: 31 March 2026
 - Notification of acceptance of articles: 15 May 2026
 - Publication: end of 2026.
Langue(s) & Parole has been published since 2015 by the International
Centre for Applied Phonetics (Mons, Belgium) and the Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona (Bellaterra, Spain) on the Open Journal Systems
platform. There are no publication fees for authors, and readers have
free access to all content.
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Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Language Acquisition
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Sociolinguistics




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