The Presidential Honorary Members for 2011 are Josh Dunn and Brian Loudermilk. They will receive four years of membership in the American Dialect Society, 2011-2014.

Josh Dunn, University of Georgia, nominated by William Kretzschmar

Josh Dunn completed his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia with a double major in Linguistics and Spanish. While still an undergraduate he was an important contributor to the Roswell Voices project. He conducted nine interviews with young Roswellians, wrote an honors thesis based on that work, and has presented his findings in several professional settings, including the 2010 NWAV. Josh is not here today because he is teaching in Brownsville, Texas, this year as part of Teach America before heading to graduate school.

Brandon Loudermilk, University of California-Davis, nominated by Robert Bayley

Brandon Loudermilk has a Master’s in linguistics from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is currently a doctoral student at UC-Davis. His CV lists already more than ten refereed presentations and eight publications. His interdisciplinary dissertation titled, Cognitive Mechanisms in Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Attitude, is supported by an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant. In his letter of nomination, Professor Bayley wrote that Brandon is “among the very finest students I have had in more than three decades of teaching.”