About The JALA


The Journal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology represents an international peer reviewed journal seeking to strengthen the junctures between linguistics and anthropology, in and for Asian regions. The JALA is produced in collaboration with The GLOCAl, The Global Council on Anthropological Linguistics.

Following repeated requests from global bodies for such a journal, JALA has emerged to satisfy the need for Anthropological and Linguistic representation which is situated and yet.

The Journal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology engages in theoretical and pragmatic debates in fields including:

  • ethnography
  • symbolism, iconicity, and indexicality
  • spatial and temporal frames
  • agency and the the equilibrium between the individual and the social
  • (multi)methodology
  • language contact
  • multifunctionality
  • revitalization
  • universality vs. particularity
  • linguistic relativity
  • socialization
  • speech (and sociocultural) communities practice
  • language, globalization, and transnational flows
  • language and identity
  • the ethnography of language
  • structuralism and post structuralism
  • ethics in research
  • cultural determinism and relativism
  • critical approaches and reflexivity
  • sociolinguistics
  • the linguistic anthropologies of translation

The Journal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology solicits academic pursuits that combine complex rhetoric with simple methodology, and welcomes the integration of both simple linguistic genres with those at a high level of linguistic complexity and hence intensified rhetoric. Work submitted to and accepted by The JALA must be of sound methodological structure, yet must attempt to move beyond rigid convention in the field of Linguistic Anthropology, to attempt entrepreneurial and heuristic work, pertaining to Asian regions. Papers accepted by The JALA will display a progressive nature in the field of Asian Linguistic Anthropology, and thus will effectively balance progressive and innovative themes, with attempts to extend (on) current academic and anthropological work with respect to language, and with a (reflexively) critical approach to all work, theorists, and theory.

Editors in Chief

Professor N. Hill
Professor S. Needham
Professor A. Haji Omar

Editorial Committee

Aditi Bhatia (Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Aditi Ghosh (Calcutta University, India)
Adrian Pablé (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Geoffrey Benjamin (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Gladys Tang (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Howard Giles (University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A.)
Ikuko Nakane (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Jack Sidnell (University of Toronto, Canada)
James Fox (Australian National University, Australia)
Jan Blommaert (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
Kuniyoshi Kataoka (Aichi University, Japan)
Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Mary Bucholtz (University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A.)
Vijay Kumar Bhatia (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Zuraidah Mohd Don (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia)

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