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.