Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 18:51:47 -0500
From: "Peter L. Patrick" PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET
Subject: Re: Where o where?
I would like to throw in my 2 cents with the suggestion by Allan
Metcalf that ADS reconsider meeting with NWAV. More than either MLA
(which I have never attended, and have no plans to attend) or the LSA
(which I have attended a half dozen times, but lately return to mostly
because the Society for Pidgin & Creole Lx meets concurrently), NWAV--
without or without the "-E"-- is a fixture on my calendar and most of
the ADSers that I have come to know personally. It has a configuration
of interests that seems congenial to ADS: not only dialect research
and social variation in general, but the aforementioned Ps and Cs &
AAVE, Southern speech, language contact and change, phonetics of vowel
shifts, style and register, and linguistic attitudes, as well as the
ever-expanding area of discourse analysis.
It isn't entirely the fault of linguists in other areas if we
don't make LSA or 'Language' our home too-- if we want to belong we
shouldn't keep writing those venues off-- but it does seem there's not
enough mutual interest lately to make LSA an ideal choice (though I
can't personally see much reason for going with MLA at all). But if we
want a medium-sized conference with a congenial crowd, and one with a
strong contingent of open-minded activist younger linguists and grad
students, why not NWAVE? It also has the advantages of being early in
the year (late October) before all travel money is spent, and of being
relatively cheap (expensive hotel rooms are not the only choice for
people who want to be part of the action). Philosophically, the
mixture of strong empirical values for language as it is used by
social beings, and the openness to theoretical approaches that has
characterized recent NWAVEs might be invigorating without being too
threatening.
Can we reconsider?
--peter patrick