Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 11:43:12 -0500
From: Ronald Butters amspeech[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ACPUB.DUKE.EDU
Subject: ADS Meeting Change
I thought that I should add my comments concerning the issue of where ADS
should meet.
My own view is that a separate meeting is a very bad idea. THERE ARE TOO
MANY CONFERENCES TO GO TO ALREADY. Adding one more will merely dilute the
numbers at each meeting.For example, consider the fact that we have had
much difficulty getting people to go to LSA when we have even a single
sessions with LSA (as we do this year). OF COURSE we don`t have very many
people who will attend the Society`s annual meting in San Diego in late
December and THEN A WEEK later attend the LSA in New Orleans! Most people
don`t have the time or money to attend both. However, there are going to
be quite a few SOCIOlinguists at the New Orleans meeting, I`m sure. They
would be more likely to join ADS if we had a full-scale meeting at LSA.
Those of us who are hard-core ADS members would be more likely to attend
the LSA if our main meeting were with the LSA (in which case I--and many
others, I believe--would skip MLA, in which case we would have the same
sort of trouble getting an MLA ADS session of even four papers; or so I
predict).
There have been some arguments to the effect that LAVIS was such a
success, we ought to model the annual meeting on that. Nice thought, but
not very much in touch with reality. LAVIS meets every TEN years, and has
been able to do so only with massive outside funding. ADS has to met
every year, and we aren`t going to get large-scale outside funding. We
have to meet every year because we have to have an Executive Committee
meeting every year and we have to have a Business meeting every year. If
that isn`t in our by-laws, it certainly should be. Annual business
meetings and annual Executive Committee meetings need to be scheduled to
make it easiest for the members to attend. Members can most easily get
institutional funds to attend meetings where their Departments are well
represented--i.e., LSA or MLA.
My own preference would be to go to LSA with our major annual
meeting--which is where the linguistic action, by and large, is at, and
which is a smaller meeting, and one which meets at a more convenient time
for many. My second choice would be to stay with MLA--at least people can
get funded to go there. My third choice would be to meet with NWAVE
(actually, this would be my first choice if I thought that members would
find it easy to get funding)--NWAVE is already the equivalent of an
Independent meeting, and it at least has the virtue of having a large
number of highly interesting social and regional dialect papers--the
young faculty members and graduate students who in my opinion are the
future of dialect study in the USA attend NWAVE on a regular basis.
One final note: Somebody suggested along the way that LSA was considering
Cincinnati as a possible meeting location. How could this be? Several
years ago, LSA overwhelmingly passed a resolution disallowing meetings in
locales which have sodomy laws. This year, the Society is stretching it
by meeting in New Orleans; although New Orleans is in a state which has a
sodomy law, according to Maggie Reynolds of LSA the City of New Orleans
has officially declared itself on record as opposing discrimination
against sexual-preference minorities. I guess that that is in the spirit
of the resolution. However, since Cincinnati has recently overturned its
antidiscrimination law, I don`t see how LSA could ask its gay and
lesbian members to attend a meeting in a city which officially allows
discrimination against them.