Languaging, Metalanguaging, Linguistics, and Love

This special issue of Language Sciences has been put together for two main reasons. The first of these is our collective desire-shared by the contributors, the journal's editor-in-chief and board, and myself-to honor Nigel Love on his retirement from 17 years as editor of this journal and 34 years as a member of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. The second reason is to reflect upon one of several influential topics with which our honoree has seeded the discourses of language theory, the cognitive sciences, and linguistics: the distinction between what he has called “first-order language” and “second-order language”.