Editorial Statement

Setting a vision for the Quarterly Journal of Speech’s content and direction means addressing the important problems in our discipline related to white supremacy, colorism, misogyny, class standing, ability, U.S.-centered thinking, anti-Islamic sentiment, anti-Semitism, anti-Blackness, anthropocentrism, ongoing colonialisms, and many forms of ethnocentrism. Calls for greater representation of marginalized perspectives in our discipline have persisted for decades, but have reached critical junctures in recent years. The controversy over NCA’s Distinguished Scholars is but one instance among numerous others that have left many folks in our field feeling disenfranchised by organizations such as NCA and journals such as QJS. Case in point: recent forums and conversations in QJS, CC/CS, and other disciplinary journals indicate a deep, urgent need and hunger for rhetorical and critical scholarship that address our current contexts and cultural milieu. These discussions represent just a few of the ongoing conversations about experiences of exclusion, marginalization, and microaggressions in rhetorical studies.

We envision then, that QJS will be a scholarly forum where authors address a wide range of social and political issues and how they function within, through, and beyond rhetoric/language. We face persistent ableism, environmental catastrophes, wars and attempted/successful exterminations of various peoples, globalization/capitalism, the slow violence of climate change/food insecurity/toxins, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, anti-Latinx, and anti-Asian racism, the rise of white supremacy and nationalism, deeply problematic immigration policies and xenophobia, oppression of queer and gender non-conforming folks, erasure of Indigenous peoples and cultures/languages, anti-Islamic and anti-Palestine sentiments and violence, as well as many other social justice issues. While topics that generally focus on rhetoric in method, theory, and/or inclusion continue to be appropriate for this journal, we especially seek submissions that engage matters and contexts that go beyond the traditional scope of this journal, particularly beyond U.S. American understandings of the world, and especially in the form of anti-oppression research frameworks. We hope that QJS as a journal will address the issues listed above, along with nation- and identity-making in the Global South, decoloniality, decolonization, settler colonialism, Indigeneity, critical race studies, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, whiteness, gender troubles, ecocultural rhetoric, ability studies, environmental (in)justices, and related theories and themes are welcomed and encouraged. We also want to encourage forms that challenge hegemonies and oppressions, particularly in academic research and writing.