Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 10:32:59 -0500 From: Grant Barrett Subject: RE>American Popular Speech Some thoughts about your American Popular Speech Online concept: -- I think I detect some hyperactive overpromoting on your part just for the sake of getting people interested so I won't really address your way-high estimates of hits per day. -- I don't imagine that we would be able to pay anyone a cent based on the revenues received from banner advertising. Being professionally interested in online advertising, I can tell you for certain that there are oodles of sites receiving 50,000 hits a day (about 10,000 unique visitors) that have a difficult time finding advertisers. -- It seems to me that you spend a large part of your day reading yellowed newspapers and fending off "hi!" chats from 13-year-old AOL users, so you must have some idea of how much time it would take to put together something like American Popular Speech Online. It's all the problems of a magazine and a software publisher combined. -- That said, where do I sign up? I'll donate my time, web server space and my pen. Grant Barrett gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com (Barry's original posts enclosed below for reference). -------------------------------------- From: Bapopik ADS-L Is this coming up again? As I've said _many_ times, the ADS needs to get much bigger (not smaller!). We need to have an online publication with the American Name Society such as AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH, something that would cover news events, movies, plays, music lyrics, books, new words and phrases, and more. Here's the latest issue: NEWS: Discussion of Gravegate, Paulagate, Travelgate, Filegate, Watergate. Reprints of recent news articles on license plate names and dog names. MOVIES: Discussion of Robin William's "pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd" in GOOD WILL HUNTING. Discussion of the Southernisms of THE RAINMAKER. Discussion of AAVE and AMISTAD by two or three experts. Teen talk and SCREAM 2. BOOKS: Reviews of Peter Matthews's CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF LINGUISTICS, Anne Soukhanov's revised Flexner, AMERICA IN SO MANY WORDS. THEATER: Africanisms and African naming in THE LION KING. SPORTS: Legal battle over Nets coach John Calipari's "F***ing Mexican Idiot." Rehabilitation words?--Latrell Sprewell, Marv Albert, Lawrence Phillips quotes. MUSIC: Lyrics of the latest from Will Smith, the Rolling Stones. SPECIAL INTERVIEW: AMISTAD's dialect coach (see above review). SPECIAL FEATURE: "Santa Claus" names (Sidewalk Santa, Street Corner Santa, Department Store Santa, St. Nick, Kris Kringle). SPECIAL FEATURE: "Gaspers" (autoerotic asphyxiation). NEW WORDS & PHRASES. NOTABLE WORDS & PHRASES. SPANGLISH, EBONICS, REGIONAL SPEECH COLUMNS. NOTES & QUERIES COLUMN. ANNOUNCEMENTS: ANS meeting, ADS meeting. UNOFFICIAL WORD-OF-THE-YEAR VOTES. WEB LINKS. CORRECTIONS AND COMMENTS. For example, if any discussion about AMISTAD were to appear in AMERICAN SPEECH, it would appear next year, after the movie closes! I have said many times that I would even fund such a venture through the first year, although I would expect that it would make money eventually. I don't apologize for putting etymologies on ADS-L--they are certainly professional and nearly all contain OED and RHHDAS antedates. The American Dialect Society has been a pretty lonely place for discussion of popular speech. Why make it worse? If you're not reading the above AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH issue right now, don't blame me! I'm willing to donate only time, expertise, and money... ... Although no one's done so, give some thought to an online AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH magazine such as the one I posted. The linguists might go to the AMISTAD review, the lexicographers might go to NEW WORDS AND PHRASES or NOTES AND QUERIES, and onomasts might check out the origin of Pumbaa in THE LION KING review. There's something for everybody--and I do mean that! I left something out of that posting--sound cards. The online magazine will have sound! It'll be amazing!! Cool! Neato! Even fun!! Say only one out of every thousand people who see a movie checks out our review of it. That's gonna be thousands of people! And say one of those people is a Bill Gates or Ross Perot, and he goes to our web site, and he reads about DARE. Or say it's a student, and that student then becomes interested in linguistics and wants to take your courses and buy your books. Think about AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH again. I think it's our future. We shouldn't enter the next millennium without it. Hakuna Matata! (See LION KING review for etymology. Punch sound card for audio clip.) AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH No response? No response at all? The AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH online publication will accept ads (which, on the computer, would be charged per site "hit"). Unlike AMERICAN SPEECH, everyone who writes for it will be PAID! It could be a lot or a little--whatever the ADS & ANS feel like payin'. Depends on the site "hits." We'll send a press release to every computer magazine and computer column. We'll tell every college and high school language program. We'll get an Associated Press story. Entertainment Weekly, too. Maybe even Safire will write about it. And we'll advertise. If you go to the movies, you notice that there are advertising slides before the main presentation. One of the slides will say something like, "Movie Reviews & a lot more. WWW.AMPOPSPEECH.COM, a new (free!) online magazine from the American Dialect Society and the American Name Society." Those kids who go to the movies are very computer literate. Many are applying to college programs, including language programs. Not one is an ADS member, and probably not one has read AMERICAN SPEECH. That's our fault. The first issue of AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH online will have 50,000-100,000 hits.