Language as a Practice of Knowledge

In this issue, we bring together research that examines language in its multiple roles: as an object of scientific investigation, as a discursive practice that shapes meaning, and as a marker of social and historical trajectories. We highlight the importance of publicly registering research projects as a key step in open science, explore how legal texts construct authority, analyze narrative conflicts around environmental debates, and revisit multilingual experiences in imperial contexts. We also present current thematic calls for papers, details on the journal’s participation in CIbCA 2025, and updated information about the Abralin Prize.

In the context of open science, publicly registering research projects represents a commitment to transparency, traceability, and scientific integrity. By making their objectives, hypotheses, methods, and analytical plans public, researchers document the originality of their investigations and make replication, collaboration, and future expansion easier. The project registration State as a Derived Aspect: A Syntactic-Semantic Analysis, by Letícia Lucinda Meirelles, outlines a five-year research program on how eventive verbs can give rise to stative interpretations in Portuguese, detailing hypotheses, corpus, analytical procedures, and timeline.

Legal texts are often presented as neutral, but a new study shows that legal language is deeply argumentative. Simone Ramos Silveira Rodrigues and Gioconda Maria Medeiros Azevedo analyze in Diante do exposto, julgo: An Analysis of the Polyphony of Speakers in a First Instance Criminal Sentence under Ducrot’s Framework, how expressions such as “it is evident that” or “as can be seen”introduce different voices into the text: those of the law, the judge, the prosecution, and the defense. This shows how language shapes authority, distributes responsibility, and sustains decisions.

The return of wolves to France reignited a public debate: were they reintroduced by humans or did they return on their own? The article Expanding the Field of Semantics: From Language to Social Conflicts, by Alfredo M. Lescano, examines how competing narratives emerge, clash, and influence public policy. The findings suggest that social conflicts are fundamentally struggles over meaning, through which discourse guides action and confers legitimacy on collective decisions.

In the early 20th century, German-speaking communities living under Russian rule in the Caucasus used both German and Russian in their daily lives. Examining newspapers from the period, the article Language and Identity in Historical Caucasian German, by Doris Stolberg and Katharina Dück, shows how this bilingual coexistence influenced language use in education, public identity, and collective belonging within an imperial context.

In 2025, Cadernos de Linguística will be the only Brazilian linguistics journal with confirmed participation in the Congreso Iberoamericano de Ciencia Abierta (CIbCA), organized by the Fundación OpenLab. The event will bring together institutions, journals, and researchers leading the transition toward more open, collaborative, and inclusive scientific practices. View the CIbCA 2025 program.

The Abralin Prize honors articles published in Cadernos de Linguística and the Revista da Abralin that make substantial contributions to linguistic science and advance the principles of open research. Submissions are considered in two categories:

• Best Article — awarded to studies that present original and influential contributions to linguistic research.

• Open and Reproducible Science Prize — awarded to articles that provide transparent methodological documentation, share data responsibly, and exemplify best practices in reproducibility.

More than a recognition of individual achievement, the prize aims to strengthen research standards across the field and to foster a scientific culture grounded in integrity, openness, and collaboration. The submission deadline is October 31, 2025.

Thematic calls for papers in Cadernos de Linguística are invitations to the academic community to co-construct the scientific debate on important issues in the field.

Current calls include:

• Cognitive Linguistics in the Real World — deadline: December 30, 2025

• From Roots to New Directions: The Trajectory of Brazilian Dialectology — deadline: November 08, 2025

• Media, Technology, and Artificial Intelligence — deadline: October 31, 2025

• Contemporary Historiographies of Linguistic Studies and Language Teaching — deadline: January 31, 2026

• Reproducibility in Linguistic Research — protocols deadline: October 31, 2025

Cadernos de Linguística fully supports the format-free submission policy, designed to streamline manuscript preparation and allow authors to focus their time on research. Read how to submit your paper here.

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