Anatomizing and extrapolating from “Do Not Publish” as oppression, silencing, and denial

The author seeks to uncover the interested and ideological nature of journal peer reviewing in relation to four manuscripts submitted to English language teaching and applied linguistics publications. The four manuscripts in question set out to problematize existing beliefs and inequitable practices in English language teaching by way of frameworks drawn from studies in critical literacy, critical pedagogy, and critical applied linguistics. A critical examination of the peer reviews of these manuscripts reveal notable instances of reviewer objection, partiality, and even antipathy with regard to the respective arguments proffered, which are nonetheless subtly and tactically dissimulated to conceal reviewer bias. Such instances of bias are in turn understood vis-à-vis the literature on the nature and processes of peer reviewing, the situated and negotiated nature of knowledge systems and the way the notions of “openness” and “closedness” qualify the nature of such knowledge systems, alongside their accompanying implications for matters regarding disciplinarity, ethicality, and the conceptualization (and essentialization) of meaning and knowledge.