Acts of the Executive Council, January 2004

ADS is governed hierarchically but openly. Most of the society's decisions are made by the Executive Council, but they are made at a meeting open to participation by all members. On Friday morning, January 9, 2004, the Council held its annual meeting in the Jefferson Room of the Sheraton Boston. Twenty-one ADS members attended, including a majority of the nine-member council. President Michael Montgomery (U. of South Carolina) presided. These matters were discussed and determined:

1. The American Speech search committee, consisting of current editor Connie Eble (U. of North Carolina, chair), William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (U. of Georgia) and Robert Bayley (U. of Texas, San Antonio), announced a successful conclusion, proposing Michael Adams (Albright Coll.) as editor, replacing Eble after a transition year 2005, and Sonja Lanehart(U. of Georgia) as associate editor for book reviews, starting immediately. Both nominations were approved unanimously.

2. At Eble's nomination, the following were approved for three-year terms 2004–2006 on the American Speech Editorial Advisory Board: Matthew Gordon (U. of Missouri), Erin McKean (Verbatim, Oxford U. Press), Thomas Nunnally (Auburn U.), and Jan Tillery (U. of Texas, San Antonio). She thanked the four who were completing their term on the Advisory Board: David Barnhart (Lexik House), Robert Ness (Dickinson Coll.), Natalie Schilling-Estes (Georgetown U.), and Beth Lee Simon (Indiana U.-Purdue U.-Fort Wayne), as well as Associate Editor Michael Montgomery, New Words editor Wayne Glowka (Georgia Coll. and State U.), and Managing Editor Charles Carson (Duke U.).

3. Carson announced that PADS 88, the every-two-decades overview of Needed Research in American English, is done, and No. 89 will be "You Know My Steez": An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of Styleshifting in a Black American Speech Community by H. Samy Alim(Duke U.). General Editor for ADS Publications Ronald Butters (Duke U.) said that there have been few submissions for our monograph series PADS or even expressions of interest, though they have been of high quality.

4. Concerns about the content and format of the ADS website led to the appointment of a committee: Grant Barrett (ADS Webmaster, New York City), Ronald Butters, Dennis Preston (Michigan State U.), and Allan Metcalf (ADS executive secretary). The committee was instructed to report to the Council by April 1 regarding possible improvements.

5. Our publisher, Duke U. Press, was represented by Journals Marketing Assistant Mandy L. Dailey-Berman. With her the Council discussed marketing and in particular the Duke Press website. The Council voted to keep dues unchanged for 2005: $50 for regular members and $25 for students, plus $10 for members outside the United States. Copies of the press's circulation and financial reports are available from ADS Executive Secretary Metcalf

6. For the Hans Kurath Fund in support of Linguistic Atlas work, the Council approved Bill Kretzschmar's nomination of Lee Pederson (Emory U.) to another three-year term 2004–06 as one of the three trustees. Kretzschmar also obtained the Council's approval of new members for his advisory board: Joan Hall(Dictionary of American Regional English), Jesse Sheidlower (Oxford U. Press), Richard W. Bailey (U. of Michigan), Sali Tagliamonte (U. of Toronto), and Edgar Schneider (U. of Regensburg). Researchers interested in financial support from the Kurath Fund for Atlas work should get in touch with Kretzschmar.

7. The Council designated the Methods in Dialectology conference to be held at the Universite de Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada in early August 2005 as the official ADS Summer meeting for 2005. This came at the request of Walter Cichocki (U. of New Brunswick), who seeks a Canadian government grant in support of the conference. ADS has supported and indeed provided grants for previous Methods conferences.

8. The ADS-sponsored faculty member at the 2005 Linguistic Institute at Harvard will be Kretzschmar. (Subsequently, in February, the Council approved financial support for a second professorship at that institute, for John Nerbonne, U. of Groningen, Netherlands.)

9. Joan Hall reported on behalf of the archives committee, whose other members are Montgomery and Beverly Flanigan (Ohio U). The Society's archives from 1889 to 1981 are at the U. of Massachusetts, Amherst. The committee will work with Executive Secretary Metcalf regarding the disposition of more recent materials.

10. The following were reappointed as regional secretaries for two-year terms 2005–06: Midwest, Kathryn Remlinger (Grand Valley State U.); South Central, Michael R. Dressman (U. of Houston-Downtown); South Atlantic, Michael Picone (U. of Alabama).

11. Michael Adams was reappointed as organizer of ADS sessions for Modern Language Association meetings, Dec. 27–30, 2004 through 2006. Annual Business Meeting

As noted above, most of the Society's decisions are made in the Executive Council meeting. At the Annual Business Meeting in the morning of January 9, the only official action was to elect Nancy Niedzielski (Rice U.) to the Executive Council for the four years 2004–07. December 23, 2003: We have posted an updated outline (92K) of sessions and presentations to be held during the annual meeting January 8-10, 2004, in Boston.

June 25, 2003: The May 2003 issue of the Newsletter of the American Dialect Society, downloadable in pdf format here (192K), details the programs of the four regional meetings of the Society, to be held this October and November. Among other matters, it also issues a final call for proposals for the ADS Annual Meeting in January, announces new books by ADS members, invites help with obscure words for the Dictionary of American Regional English, and has a report from our delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies.

June 24, 2003: Seeking Editors for American Speech. The American Dialect Society has appointed a search committee to recommend a new Editor of American Speech to assume full responsibilities no later than January 1, 2006, and a Book Review Editor to begin as soon as practical.

American Speech, the quarterly refereed journal of the American Dialect Society, is published by Duke University Press in Durham, North Carolina. The Managing Editor, Charles Carson, a full-time member of the editorial staff of DUP, oversees the day-to-day operations of ADS publications and the production of both American Speech and PADS.

The Editor works with the Associate Editor and members of the Editorial Advisory Board to evaluate and select submissions for publication in the journal in accordance with the Editorial Policy stated inside the back cover of the journal. The Editor may also from time to time plan special issues. The page-length and deadlines of the issues of American Speech are matters of contractual obligation, and the Editor and Managing Editor must work together to assure that these are met. The work of the Editor of American Speech can be done at a distance from the DUP offices via telephone, fax, and email.

The Book Review Editor will select the books to be reviewed, assign them to credible reviewers, set and maintain the length and due dates of the reviews, and edit them for publication. The Managing Editor will handle the mailing of review copies to reviewers.

Members of the search committee are current Editor Connie Eble (chair, cceble@email.unc.edu); Robert Bayley (rbayley@utsa.edu); William Kretzschmar (billk@atlas.uga.edu); and Charles Carson (carson@duke.edu). ADS members who are interested in applying for either Editor or Book Review Editor or who wish to suggest candidates should get in touch with any member of the search committee by January 1, 2004.

January 21, 2003: January 2003 newsletter (172K) of the American Dialect Society. It reports on the recent Annual Meeting in Atlanta and announces meetings and calls for papers for the rest of 2003. There is also the customary request for help from the Dictionary of American Regional English in determining the meanings and regional usage of obscure words.

January 8, 2003: Call for Papers: Annual Meeting 2004

The American Dialect Society will hold its next annual meeting in Boston, January 8-10, 2004, at the Sheraton Boston with our host the Linguistic Society of America.

Friday, August 15 is the deadline for proposals for that meeting. Send 150-300 word abstracts by to Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf. Along with your proposal, tell us if you will need a tape or CD player. All sessions will have an overhead projector.

Proposals will be judged anonymously by a committee chaired by ADS vice president Joan Hall. If your proposal is accepted, you'll be asked for an abstract of no more than 200 words for the LSA program.

We will follow the usual outline for our meeting: program sessions Thursday afternoon, Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning and afternoon; open Executive Council meeting early Friday morning, and Annual Business Meeting early Saturday morning; Words of the Year nominations late Friday morning and final vote late Friday afternoon, followed by our Bring-Your-Own-Book exhibit and reception. Charles Meyer of the U. of Massachusetts at Boston will be the speaker at our luncheon on Saturday.

November 25, 2002:September 2002 newsletter (300K) of the American Dialect Society, available here in PDF format. Among other matters, the newsletter also announces publication of Volume 4 of the Dictionary of American Regional English, a project sponsored by the society.

October 18, 2002: Allen Walker Read, etymologist and scholar of the first order, has died. See the New York Times obituary.

June 10, 2002: Latest newsletter of the American Dialect Society, in PDF format. (180K)

March 8, 2002: Latest newsletter of the American Dialect Society, in PDF format. (216K)

December 19, 2001: Words of the Year Vote Anticipated

The American Dialect Society will choose its Words of the Year 2001 at its annual meeting in San Francisco on January 4, 2002.

Representatives of the media are invited to join members and friends of the American Dialect Society as they discuss and vote on the words and phrases that are most representative of the past year.

On Friday, Jan. 4, the final selections will be made in two sessions at the Hyatt Regency—Embarcadero, where the American Dialect Society meets in association with the Linguistic Society of America. Nominations will be determined in a meeting from 10:30 a.m. to noon in the Golden Gate Room on the Bay Level of the Hyatt Regency. The final votes in all categories will be taken in Seacliff A/B on the Bay Level from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. All voting is by voice, so results are immediately known to all. Before each vote, those present are invited to speak on behalf of their candidates.

The words or phrases do not have to be brand new, but they have to be newly prominent or distinctive in the past year. The election is serious, based on members' expertise in the study of words, but it is far from solemn. Words will be chosen in a number of categories including Most Useful, Most Unnecessary, and Most Euphemistic. An overall Word (or Phrase, or Prefix) of the Year will also be chosen.

Presiding at the Jan. 4 nominating session will be Professor Wayne Glowka of Georgia College and State University, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. He conducts the column "Among the New Words" in the society's quarterly journal American Speech.

Glowka will present his list of candidates, as well as those proposed by David Barnhart of Lexik House, Hyde Park, New York. He is editor of the quarterly Barnhart Dictionary Companion, the only periodical devoted to new words.

The American Dialect Society began choosing Words of the Year in 1990. Previous winners are here.

Wayne's Words 2001
These are the words and phrases nominated by Wayne Glowka, chair of the American Dialect Society's New Words Committee. Other nominees are expected and welcome.

Wayne Glowka
Georgia College & State University
Milledgeville, GA 31061

America's New War n. War waged by the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (Lexis-Nexis Sept 15, 2001)

anti-Al-Qaeda adj. Opposed to the international terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden (Lexis-Nexis Oct 10, 2001)

Apocalypse sex, Armageddon sex n. Sexual relations resulting from bonding promoted by the collapse of the WTC (Time [fr. AtlConst] Oct 1, 2001)

cuddle puddle n. 1: Jacuzzi (in Southern Africa) (Lexis-Nexis Mar 20, 1987) 2: Pile of ecstasy users on the floor (USA Today Aug 1, 2001)

EC adj. Emotionally correct; knowing how to move people in an acceptable way in times of crisis, anxiety, or confusion (USA Today Oct 8, 2001; but note emotionally correct Lexis-Nexis Dec 3, 1997)

evil doers n. Persons responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (in the parlance of President George W. Bush) (OED2 1398)

ground zero[OED2 'that part of the ground situated immediately under an exploding bomb, esp. an atomic one' 1946] n. Site of the former World Trade Center (Lexis-Nexis Sept 12, 2001)

hyperterrorism n. Large-scale destruction perpetrated by terrorists (Lexis-Nexis Sept 13, 2001)

Let's roll catch phrase. Let us take action (words of Todd Beamer on United Airlines flight 93 before the attack that foiled the hijackers on Sept 11, 2001) (Lexis-Nexis Sept 16, 2001)

Netwallah n. Web-site designer/manager (Lexis-Nexis 0 hits; OED2 wallah 1776 fr. Hindi or Hindustani)

9/11, 9.11, 9-11, Sept. 11 n. September 11, 2001, the day the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked by hijacked commercial airliners (Lexis-Nexis 9/11 Sept 12, 2001)

notcom n. Business conducting operations primarily in meat space (CNN Headline News Jan 29, 2001 "This was the year of the notcom." [said in reference to Super Bowl television ads]; Lexis-Nexis Feb 5, 2001)

Once Negro n. Black eleven (i.e., September 11, 2001, in a corrido) (NPR Morning Edition Nov 20, 2001)

orthorexia nervosa n. Obsession with eating the right foods (Lexis-Nexis Dec 22, 2001)

Osamaniac n. Woman sexually attracted to Osama Bin Laden (Lexis-Nexis: Jenny McCartney Sunday Telegraph [London] Oct 14, 2001)

patriot hacking n. Vandalism of an enemy's Web sites (Chicago Tribune Sept 27, 2001)

post-Sept. 11 adj. Of the world after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Lexis-Nexis Sept 14, 2001)

post-Taliban adj. Of the time in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Taliban regime (Lexis-Nexis Sept 21, 2001)

Sept. 10, September 10 adj. Oblivious to impending danger; petty, self-absorbed (Lexis-Nexis Oct 12, 2001 "When you find yourself agitated about something that is not very important, remind yourself how that is so very Sept. 10.")

stage-calling n. Making ostentatious cell-phone calls so that other people know how important the caller is (or thinks he is) (Chicago Tribune [fr. NYT] Nov 26, 2001)

teentailer n. Retailer of clothes for teenagers (Lexis-Nexis Sept 2, 2001)

Terrible Tuesday n. Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the day terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (Lexis-Nexis: first use with diff. def. Aug 9, 1987; with ref. to 9/11/01 Sept 13, 2001)

theoterrorism n. Violence perpetrated on civilians for a religious purpose (Humanist Mar/April 2000)

January 31, 2001: The American Dialect Society is now accepting proposals for papers to be delivered at its annual conjoint meeting with the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association.

The Convention will be held in Vancouver, BC Canada and will run from October 11-13, 2001.

Papers dealing with any aspect of the dialects of English or other languages spoken in the United States will be considered and those dealing with Canadian dialects, language contact in Canada, and dialect contact in Canada or along the US/Canada border are especially welcome.

Please send one 150 word abstract by e-mail or two abstracts by regular mail (one with author's name, the other anonymous) to the address listed below no later than March 15, 2001.

Glenn A. Martinez
Department of Modern Languages
The University of Texas at Brownsville
80 Fort Brown
Brownsville, TX 78520

February 2, 2001: New Ways of Analyzing Variation 30 will be held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, from Thursday, October 11 through Sunday, October 14, 2001. NWAV 30 marks the completion of three decades of NWAV and a time to look ahead. Thus, in addition to the usual array of refereed papers, the conference will feature colloquia showcasing the work of the next wave of NWAV scholars. These colloquia will center around language and ethnicity, sociophonetics, and the multidisciplinary profile of variationist studies.

Special events include a night at the North Carolina State Fair; a book-launching reception; a special performance in spoken word by Shirlette Ammons, an award-winning poetry slammer from Mt. Olive, North Carolina; and a Saturday night banquet honoring a couple of the founders of NWAV, Roger W. Shuy and Ralph W. Fasold.

Abstracts for papers or poster sessions on all topics in variation studies and sociolinguistics are invited. Abstracts of 400 words or less (including bibliography) should be submitted via online submission http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/nwavor by June 1, 2001, with notification of acceptance by August 3. Special arrangements for early submissions by international scholars applying for travel grants can by made by contacting Walt Wolfram by . Registration by September 27th will be $100 for faculty and $60 for students; onsite registration will be $125 and $85. The conference will be held at the Brownstone Hotel, located on Hillsborough St. at the eastern edge of the NC State campus. A block of 150 rooms has been reserved for NWAV registrants at a rate of $85 per night (single or double room) plus 12% tax. Reservations at the special conference rate can be made any time prior to September 27th, 2001, at 919-828-0811 (FAX 919-828-2788).

NWAV 30 is sponsored by NC State in cooperation with Duke University. For further information, contact Walt Wolfram at walt_wolfram@ncsu.edu or 919-515-4151.

October 26, 1999: Jesse Sheidlower and Dennis Baron provide a four-day language commentary in a Breakfast Table exchange at Slate.

June 20, 1999: The joint meeting of the American Name Society and the Linguistic Society of America will be held January 6-9, 2000, in Chicago. A call for papers has gone out; the abstract deadline is September 1, 1999.

The Southwest Journal of Linguistics is renewing its call for manuscripts.

May 19, 1999: Language in the Judicial Process is back up and running. The site, edited by Bethany Dumas, offers "current information of interest to all scholars interested in law and language as well as to legal practitioners."

May 5, 1999: Fred Shapiro announced availability of his Oxford Dictionary Of American Legal Quotations and Bryan Garner's Dictionary Of Modern Legal Usage, Second Edition. "With more than 9,000 definitions and more than 3,500 quotations on all aspects of the law, The Lawyer's Reference Shelf is a valuable professional resource for all who study, teach, practice, or write about the law." Check out Oxford University Press for more information.

May 4, 1999: The ADS-L archive renovation is finished! You can now make faster searches using Boolean strings and other variables, and results are returned named by the original message subject. Results can also be sorted by topic (it uses a keyword indexing feature: very cool), or confidence, which ranks results according to how many of your search strings are matched.

Thanks goes out to everyone who offered their assistance (and commiseration) in getting the new archive up and running, and an extra thanks to Andrew Payne (apayne@corp.sun.com) who wrote the script that converted 17,000 poorly-formatted database records into 17,000 individual, clean, numbered, formatted HTML files. Andrew is a highly-qualified programmer now working for Sun Microsystems.

Due entirely to the efforts of Tony Aristar, LinguistList has taken over the responsibility of turning ADS-L daily digests into web pages. The interface may not be as nice [if I may say so: ed.], but it's completely automated and therefore new pages will be created on time and require no additional human action. In April, Tony also started a parallel archive to the existing, complete one. As of this writing, the LinguistList archive of ADS-L will not contain any messages prior to April 1999.

April 21, 1999: We have successfully and flawlessly switched service providers. We now use HostPro.

April 16, 1999: We are in the process of switching service providers, so the site may be unreliable over the next week or two. We are also making other arrangements for the ADS-L archive, which is not available at this time. The new archive should offer better search options at a faster speed. Hang in there.

Allan Metcalf mentions Comments on Etymology, an on-paper newsletter edited by Gerald Cohen. Allan says, "for anyone seriously interested in the origins of American expressions, especially slang ones, CoE is indispensable. For anyone not-so-seriously interested, it's entertaining and engaging." The newsletter includes heavy and regular contributions by Barry Popik. To subscribe, send $13 (if an individual; $17 if an institution), payable to "Comments on Etymology," to Gerald Cohen, Dept of Applied Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, MO 65401.

March 27, 1999: We've updated the membership information.

National Public Radio's "Lost & Found Sound" features a segment of interest in which William Labov focuses on accents in New York City.

February 17, 1999: The January issue of the Newsletter of the American Dialect Society (a.k.a. NADS) should be in members' snail mail boxes by now. Otherwise, you can download it in PDF format. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to view it.

February 12, 1999: A call for papers has gone out for the November 1999 American Dialect Society session of the Midwest Modern Language Association meeting in Minneapolis.

January 30, 1999: Two calls for papers have been added: Two MLA sessions and 12 to 15 concurrent sessions of the American Name Society at the ANS annual meeting, plus the Special Session on Onomastics at the joint meeting of the American Name Society and the Linguistic Society of America.

"VERBATIM, The Language Quarterly," is looking for language books to review and readers to review them. For more information, contact editor@verbatimmag.com.

January 26, 1999: The 1998 Word of the Year report is final and available, along with previous years' votes back to 1992.

January 17, 1999: Jesse Sheidlower discusses the 1998 Word of the Year on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. (You'll need RealAudio to listen).

January 14, 1999: You can now view an entire day's ADS-L postings in the form of a digest directly from the web site in the ADS-L Digest Archive.

January 11, 1999: "E-," the prefix in "e-commerce," "e-shopping" and "e-banking," was voted the Word of the Year at the American Dialect Society annual meeting last week. Look for the full report next week.

Lynne Murphy is organizing the Modern Language Association's Lexicography discussion group session for next year's annual meeting and is seeking abstracts. She writes: "The session is entitled 'The Dictionary and the Classroom.'

I'm interested in reading abstracts about any work relating to the creation of dictionaries for school settings or the use of dictionaries in school settings. The topic may narrow if I get a bunch of good abstracts that seem to go together in some way.

The nitty-gritty: One page abstracts for 20-minute presentations due to me by 15 March. You do not have to be an MLA member to submit abstracts, but you do have to be one to present a paper. The MLA will be in Chicago, 27-30 December.

Send abstracts to:

M.Lynne Murphy
Assistant Professor in Linguistics
Department of English
Baylor University
PO Box 97404
Waco, TX 76798

Jesse Sheidlower points out Paul Dickson's web site for Family Words, one of his many books about language. The book and the site are devoted to words that are used only among members of a family.

December 23, 1998: Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf sends out this reminder: "Saturday, the 9th of January [1999], at 1:15 p.m. in Los Cerritos room of the Bonaventure hotel in downtown L.A., ADS will have its annual luncheon. There should be room for all, but this is to let you know that room size dictates an absolute limit of 60. So to be sure you have a place, reserve yours in advance by letting me know now.

"ADS president Walt Wolfram will be our postprandial speaker: 'On the Reconfiguration of American Dialects in the 21st Century.'"

Allan also writes that there is a Jan. 5 deadline to announce a call for papers in the Modern Language Association's own newsletter, for the December 1999 meeting in Chicago. "Is there an ADS member who'd like to organize a session or two for us, and who'd like to use that publicity to invite proposals? Let me know promptly, and I'll see about getting prompt approval for your appointment from the ADS Executive Council."

December 8, 1998: We've acquired our own domain. Woo-hoo! We've got goose bumps, goose pimples, pilo-erections, whatever you call them. Please let everyone know that our web address has changed, and don't forget to change it in your bookmarks.

The ADS-L archive is finally back online, with the entire database 1992 to present searchable. There are more than 14,600 messages archived, and although everything's not perfect, it's a fine place to find answers.

Don't forget that the Modern Language Association gathering in San Francisco is just around the corner. ADS and the American Name Society will have meetings during the conference.

November 17, 1998: Mary Morzinki is the contact person for papers to be presented at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference being held in Santa Fe next year.