ADS-L Archive Searchable, back to 1992! If you've got questions about American dialects, there's a good chance it's been talked about. Today's ADS-L Messages
ADS-L Daily Digests View concatenated email messages from the list without having to subscribe, courtesy of LinguistList, without subscribing. You have to subscribe to participate, though.
ADS-L: The Email Discussion List
ADS-L is a discussion list for members of the American Dialect Society and interested others. Among our members are linguists, dictionary editors and lexicographers, writers, journalists, academics, students, researchers, librarians, translators and interested amateurs. Our primary topic of conversation is dialects of North American English, but we do wander off topic frequently.
The quantity of list traffic varies greatly, usually according the fluctutions of the academic year, but the traffic level should be considered high. If you are not prepared to receive a hundred or more messages a day on occasion from this list, then consider using the DIGEST option below.
This list is not moderated. In other words, anything submitted to the list is automatically forwarded to the entire list without being first reviewed by a listmom, boss or moderator. You must be subscribed to participate. Completely inappropriate behavior, can get you banned.
Be aware that our discussion of dialects, language and linguistics may lead us to any word or phrase, "good" or "bad," "dirty" or "clean." We generally take a descriptivist approach: all subject matter is fair game. This includes pejoratives, curse words, euphemisms for bodily functions and body parts, and other forms of swearing. Sometimes it's quite colorful, but always academic and enlightening.
To Subscribe To subscribe to the list, send "SUB ADS-L YOUR NAME" as the complete body of an email message from the email account at which you'd like to subscribe, to listserv@listserv.uga.edu.
To Unsubscribe To leave the list at any time, send "SIGNOFF ADS-L" the complete body of an email message from the account which you would like to unsubscribe, to listserv@listserv.uga.edu.
To Participate
To send a message to all the people currently subscribed to the list,
just send mail to ads-l@listserv.uga.edu. This is called "sending mail to
the list," because you send mail to a single address and LISTSERV makes
copies for all the people who have subscribed. This address
(ads-l@listserv.uga.edu) is also called the "list address." You must
never send a command to that address, as it would be distributed to all
the people who have subscribed. All commands, not messages, must be sent to the
"LISTSERV server address," listserv@listserv.uga.edu.
To Receive Digests Only This list is available in digest form. This means that you will receive roughly one message per day containing all the messages for the last 24 hours rather than receiving each message individually. If you wish to receive the digested version of the postings, but not the individual messages, send "SET ADS-L DIGEST" as the complete body of an email message to listserv@listserv.uga.edu.
To Stop Receiving Mail While Staying Subscribed
If you need to temporarily stop receiving mail you can send a "SET ADS-L NOMAIL" command to listserv@listserv.uga.edu from the address at which you'd like to stop receiving mail. Don't send this to the list! This command is also useful because it allows you to receive the list at one address while enabling you to send to the list from any account from which you've subscribed which you have set to NOMAIL, since you must be subscribed to the list in order to post to it. To resume receiving mail at that address, send the command "SET ADS-L MAIL" to listserv@listserv.uga.edu from the proper account.
To Conceal Your Subscription Status From Others
Please note that it is possible for other people to determine
that you are signed up to the list through the use of the "REVIEW"
command, which returns the e-mail address and name of all the
subscribers. If you do not want your name to be visible, just send a
"SET ADS-L CONCEAL" command to listserv@listserv.uga.edu.
More Commands
More information on LISTSERV commands can be found in the LISTSERV
reference card, which you can retrieve by sending an "INFO REFCARD"
command to listserv@listserv.uga.edu.
List Managers
If you have questions about ADS-L, send email to
or