American Dialect Society

From Thursday, January 7, 2010, through Saturday, January 9, the American Dialect Society will hold its next annual meeting, hosted as usual by the Linguistic Society of America, at the new Hilton Baltimore, 401 West Pratt Street in Baltimore, Maryland.

Monday, August 10 is the deadline for proposals for 20-minute presentations. All you need is a title and an abstract of 150 to 300 words. Send it via e-mail to Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Presenters must be current members of the American Dialect Society.

Audio-visual equipment: Two items of equipment will be available for all presentations: an LCD projector, and, new this year, a direct audio connection to the speaker system so that sound files on computers may be played. If you will need other equipment such as an overhead projector, please say so when you send your proposal.

Scheduling: If you have a preference for day or time of your presentation, please indicate that too. We cannot guarantee the time you prefer, but the program committee will try to accommodate you. The meeting will follow our customary schedule:

Thursday, January 7: Executive Council and annual business meeting in the afternoon. Program session in late afternoon, followed by Words of the Year nominations.

Friday, January 8: Programs sessions in morning and afternoon. Words of the Year vote and Bring-Your-Own-Book reception in the early evening.

Saturday, January 9: Program sessions in morning and afternoon; Annual Luncheon in between.

Proposals will be judged anonymously by a committee chaired by Luanne von Schneidemesser, ADS president-elect. If your proposal is accepted, you’ll be asked for an abstract of no more than 200 words for the LSA program.

Session chairs: If you’re interested in chairing a session, let the Executive Secretary know at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Tell him any preference you have for time or topic.

Special sessions: If you’re interested in proposing an entire session rather than an individual paper, don’t wait till August, but send a proposal now to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). You don’t need to wait till you have a full formal proposal.

Teaching panel: The ADS Committee on Teaching may sponsor a panel at the annual meeting. If you would like to propose a 20-minute talk for that panel, send your proposal directly to the chair of the Committee on Teaching, Anne Curzan, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Her deadline is also August 10.

Specially for students: Four travel grants of $500 each will be awarded to students whose papers have been chosen for the program. Furthermore, all students who are members of ADS, whether or not they are presenting papers, are invited to attend the Annual Luncheon for free.

Hotel and registration: ADS members will be eligible to reserve rooms and register for the meeting at LSA member rates. For details see the website http://www.lsadc.org.

Future LSA-ADS meetings: 2011 Pittsburgh, Jan. 6–9; 2012 Portland, Jan. 5–8; 2013 place to be determined, Jan. 3–6; 2014 Minneapolis, Jan. 2–5. All meetings will be at Hiltons.

Word of the Year: At this meeting, in addition to choosing Words of the Year just past, that is, words of 2009, we will also have the solemn responsibility of choosing a Word of the Decade 2000–2009. See the ADS website for details: http://www.americandialect.org. [Last modified: 16 Jan 2009 04:19 GMT | permalink]

At the American Dialect Society annual meeting in Baltimore next January, not only will the Society choose Words of the Year just past, but members and friends will also have the solemn responsibility of choosing a Word of the Decade 2000–2009.

Until most of 2009 is over, judgment about the top words of 2009 will have to wait. But since the decade is nearly over, it is not too early to consider which word best reflects this volatile ten-year period.

Nominations may be sent to the chair of the ADS New Words Committee, Grant Barrett, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). The committee will hold an open meeting to consider nominations on Thursday, January 7, 2010, with the final vote the next day.

Candidates will include the ADS Word of the Year for each year, though the choice for Word of the Decade need not be limited to them. Some of them pervaded the whole decade, but others characterized only their particular year. These were the Words of the Year, many of which now require explanation:

2000 chad, a small scrap of paper punched from a voting card.

2001 9/11, terrorist attacks on September 11.

2002 weapons of mass destruction or WMD, sought for (without success) in Iraq.

2003 metrosexual, fashion-conscious heterosexual male.

2004 red/blue/purple states, red favoring conservative Republicans and blue favoring liberal Democrats, as well as the undecided purple states in the political map of the United States.

2005 truthiness, what one wishes to be the truth regardless of the facts. (From the Colbert Report on television.)

2006 to be plutoed, to pluto, to be demoted or devalued, as was the former planet Pluto.

2007 subprime, a risky or less than ideal loan or investment.

2008 bailout, rescue by government of companies on the brink of failure.

The American Dialect Society was established in 1889 to study the English language in North America. It has been choosing Words of the Year since 1990, and Words of the Decade since 2000. In 2000 the Word of the Decade was web. (That year the Society also chose Word of the Century, jazz, and Word of the Millennium, she.)

More information on Words of the Year is available at the American Dialect Society website, http://www.americandialect.org/woty/. [Last modified: 20 Feb 2009 04:13 GMT | permalink]

The American Dialect Society, Midwest Region with the Midwest Modern Language Association

November 12-15, 2009
Hyatt Regency St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri

We welcome papers dealing with varieties of English and other languages spoken in the United States. Presentations may be based in traditional dialectology or in other areas of language variation and change, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, anthropological linguistics, folk linguistics, language and gender/sexuality, language attitudes and ideologies, pragmatics and politeness, linguistics in the schools, or critical discourse analysis.

March 15, 2009 is the deadline for abstracts. See below for abstract specifications.

Send abstracts to:

Susan M. Burt
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
American Dialect Society, Midwest Secretary
Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois
1-309-438-7840

Abstract specifications: Email submissions only; send abstract as an attachment in Word. Abstract should be no more than 250 words, excluding title and references. Include word count at the end of the abstract and omit any identifying information (name, affiliation, etc). Include contact information, affiliation, and abstract title in the body of your email.

Membership to ADS is recommended. Membership is $50 and includes a year's subscription to the society's journal, American Speech, and a copy of the Publication of the American Dialect Society (PADS, an annual hardbound supplement). Membership information is available at http://www.dukeupress.edu/ads/ .

Membership to MMLA is required. Membership is $35 for full and associate professors, $30 for assistant professors and schoolteachers, $20 for adjunct and part-time faculty, and $15 for students, retired, and unemployed. Information on membership is available at the MMLA website.

For more information about ADS at MMLA, see the MMLA website, http://www.uiowa.edu/~mmla, go to “Call for Papers,” scroll down to “Associated Organizations,” then to “American Dialect Society.”
[Last modified: 13 Jan 2009 05:17 GMT | permalink]