Monday, August 12, is the deadline for proposals for 20-minute presentations. All you need is a title and an abstract of 150 to 300 words. Send it via e-mail to Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf at americandialect@mac.edu.

This year a poster session will be available. If you prefer to present at a poster session, please say so with your proposal.

This year LSA begins its program right after New Year’s Day. (See below.) That may be too early for some travelers, so the schedule for the meeting has been extended. With your proposal, please state the days you would be available. This will not be a consideration for acceptance.

Presenters must be current members of the American Dialect Society.

Audio-visual equipment: An LCD projector with sound will be available for all presentations, along with a microphone. If you will need other equipment, please say so when you send your proposal.

Scheduling: The meeting will follow this schedule:

Thursday, January 2: Program session in late afternoon, followed by Words of the Year nominations.

Friday, January 3: Programs sessions in morning. Executive Council and annual business meeting in late morning. Program sessions in afternoon. Words of the Year vote and Bring-Your-Own-Book reception in early evening.

Saturday, January 4: Program sessions in morning and afternoon; Annual Luncheon in between.

Sunday, January 5: Possible program sessions.

Proposals will be judged anonymously by a committee chaired by Robert Bayley, ADS president-elect. If your proposal is accepted, you’ll be asked for an abstract of no more than 200 words for the LSA program.

Teaching panel: As usual, the ADS Committee on Teaching will sponsor a panel at the annual meeting. If you would like to propose a 20-minute talk, send your proposal directly to the chair of the Committee on Teaching, Anne Curzan, at acurzan@umich.edu. Her deadline is also August 12.

Session chairs: If you’re interested in chairing a session, let the Executive Secretary know at americandialect@mac.edu. Tell him any preference you have for time or topic.

Travel grant for ADS member: The third annual Audrey Duckert Memorial Travel Award of $500 to attend the Annual Meeting will be given to an ADS member. The recipient will be chosen by ADS President Jesse Sheidlower. Applications in the form of a letter to President Sheidlower will be due after the program for the Annual Meeting has been determined. Audrey Duckert was a long-time member of ADS and co-founder of the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Travel grants for students: Four travel grants of $500 each will be awarded to students whose papers have been chosen for the program. Furthermore, all students who are members of ADS are invited to attend the Annual Luncheon for free.

Hotel and registration: ADS members will be eligible to reserve rooms and register for the meeting at LSA member rates. For details see the website www.lsadc.org.

Future LSA-ADS meetings: Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Jan. 8-11, 2015; Washington (D.C.) Marriott Marquis, Jan. 7-10, 2016.

Words of the Year: As we have done for two decades now, we will choose candidates for Word of the Year on Thursday and vote for our WOTY the next day, with our Bring Your Own Book exhibit and reception immediately following. If you have a nominee for WOTY 2011, you can send it to our New Words Committee chair, Benjamin Zimmer, at bzimmer@thinkmap.com.

Presiding at the Jan. 4 voting session were ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf of MacMurray College, and Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society and executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com. Zimmer is also a language columnist for the Boston Globe.

“This was the year when the hashtag became a ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk,” Zimmer said. “In the Twittersphere and elsewhere, hashtags have created instant social trends, spreading bite-sized viral messages on topics ranging from politics to pop culture.”

Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as “vocabulary item” — not just words but phrases. The words or phrases do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year. The vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It is fully informed by the members’ expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion. Members in the 124-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, editors, students, and independent scholars. In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be officially inducting words into the English language. Instead they are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining.

In a companion vote, sibling organization the American Name Society voted “Sandy” as Name of the Year for 2012 in its ninth annual name-of-the-year contest. It refers to the superstorm that ravaged the East Coast.

AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY VOTE TALLIES

The number after each nomination is the number of votes it received. Winners are indicated by an asterisk, and numbers separated by slash marks indicate a run-off. Voting totals for each category might not be identical because the number of voters might have changed for each category.

WORD OF THE YEAR

YOLO: acronym for “You Only Live Once,” often used sarcastically or self-deprecatingly 32
fiscal cliff: threat of spending cuts and tax increases looming over end-of-year budget negotiations 25
*#hashtag: a word or phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#), used on Twitter to mark a topic or make a commentary 45/118
Gangnam style: the trendy style of Seoul’s Gangnam district, as used in the Korean pop song of the same name 19
marriage equality: legal recognition of same-sex marriage 57/99
47 percent: portion of the population that does not pay federal income tax 31

MOST USEFUL

YOLO: acronym for “You Only Live Once,” often used sarcastically or self-deprecatingly 59/62
* -(po)calypse, -(ma)geddon: hyperbolic combining forms for various catastrophes 66/115
hate-watching: continuing to follow a television show despite having an aversion to it 39/
beardruff: dandruff from one’s beard 10

MOST CREATIVE

mansplaining: a man’s condescending explanation to a female audience  54/90
alpacalypse: the Mayan apocalypse predicted for Dec. 21, 2012 (alpaca + -lypse) 50
*gate lice: airline passengers who crowd around a gate waiting to board 53/93
dancelexia: inability to pull off dance moves (such as misspelling “YMCA”) 36

MOST UNNECESSARY

*legitimate rape: type of rape that Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed rarely results in pregnancy 94
Frankenstorm: term for Hurricane Sandy’s hybrid storm system (after Frankenstein’s monster) 14
HD: abbreviation for “high-definition,” used for things that could not be high-definition 21
feels: slangy shortening of “feelings” 20

MOST OUTRAGEOUS

Dunlop effect: when one’s stomach protrudes over ill-fitting pants (“belly done lop over the belt”) 3
*legitimate rape: type of rape that Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed rarely results in pregnancy 156
slut-shaming: attacking a woman for socially stigmatized sexual activity 2
butt-chugging: an alcohol enema, used in college fraternity hazing rituals 36

MOST EUPHEMISTIC

disruptive: destroying existing business models 3
Gray Thursday: name given to Thanksgiving as a shopping day before Black Friday 12
*self-deportation: policy of encouraging illegal immigrants to return voluntarily to their home countries 142
ratchet: slang term originally referring to “urban divas” now used to mean “ghetto”  7
evolution: change of opinion 21

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

fiscal cliff: threat of spending cuts and tax increases looming over end-of-year budget negotiations 8
superstorm: an unusually large and destructive storm, such as Hurricane Sandy 9
MOOC: acronym for “massive open online course” 4
*marriage equality: legal recognition of same-sex marriage 156
big data: large collections of digital information used for revealing behavioral insights 20

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

cray-cray: slangy shortening and reduplication of “crazy” 5
Gangnam style: the trendy style of Seoul’s Gangnam district, as used in the Korean pop song of the same name 5
Windows Metro: name originally used for the Windows 8 operating system 8
*phablet: mid-sized electronic device between a smartphone and a tablet 76/92
*YOLO: acronym for “You Only Live Once,” often used sarcastically or self-deprecatingly79/91
meggings: a blend for “male leggings” 22

ELECTION WORDS (new category)

47 percent: portion of the population that does not pay federal income tax 64
Etch-a-Sketch: metaphor of reinvention used by Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom 8
Eastwooding: photo fad inspired by Clint Eastwood’s unscripted speech at the RNC 10
Romney/Obama: names of candidates used for blends (Obamaloney, Obamageddon, Romnesia, Romney Hood) 13
*binders (full of women): term used by Romney in the second presidential debate to describe the resumes of female job candidates that he consulted as governor of Massachusetts 107
malarkey: nonsense, empty talk (as used by Biden in the vice-presidential debate) 8

…

Read or download the entire press release in PDF form.

All previous years’ winners are here.

The abstracts for the papers to be presented are here.

HOTEL: This year it will be the Boston Marriott Copley Place. Go to the LSA website, linguisticsociety.org, for special LSA rates, available also to ADS members.

REGISTRATION: As guests of the Linguistic Society, we must register with them. Thankfully, ADS members may register at the LSA members’ rate. Go to linguisticsociety.org. Click on “Register for Meeting.” If you are not an LSA member, you will have an opportunity to enter a coupon code. Nonstudent registrants should enter SSREGULAR as their coupon code, and students should enter SSSTUDENT as theirs. Discounts will be applied that bring registrations down to the member rate.

ADS registration: Additional and entirely optional, but those who attend ADS sessions are encouraged to register with the ADS Executive Secretary for $20, students $10. This helps defray the cost of our BYOB reception and earns you a distinctive decoration for your LSA badge.

LUNCHEON: At 12:15 p.m. Saturday, January 5. Speaker: ADS President Luanne von Schneidemesser, Dictionary of American Regional English. Topic: “Bubblers, Schnibbles, Lawyers, and Cheeseheads: Linguistic Outreach. The Wisconsin Idea.”
Menu: Traditional New England lobster roll, kettle chips and cole slaw; greens salad with gingered beets, goat cheese, pumpernickel croutons and apple cider dressing; apple tart; rolls and butter, coffee or tea.

Cost is $40. Students who are members of ADS may attend free. Reservations may be made in advance with ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf at americandialect@mac.edu.

WOTY: The nominating meeting for Words of the Year 2012 is at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, and the final vote at 5:30 p.m. Friday (see schedule below). All members and friends are invited to participate.

Name of the Year: At the start of our WOTY session on Friday, we will also host the American Name Society’s announcement of its vote on Name of the Year 2012.

BYOB Reception: After the Friday voting on Words of the Year, you’re invited to our annual Bring-Your-Own-Book reception from 6:45 to 7:45 p.m. Bring your new book or books; we’ll have tables along the walls where you can display them.

Future LSA-ADS meetings: Hilton Minneapolis, Jan. 2-5, 2014; Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Jan. 8-11, 2015; Washington (D.C.) Marriott Marquis, Jan. 7-10, 2016.

Program Committee: Jesse Sheidlower, Oxford U Press, chair.

Executive Council
1:00 – 3:00 p.m., Provincetown Room
Open meeting; all members welcome. Presiding: ADS President Luanne von Schneidemesser, DARE.

Annual Business Meeting
3:00 – 3:30 p.m. Provincetown Room

Most of the business of the Society is conducted at the preceding Executive Council meeting, to which all members are invited (see above). But it is this Business Meeting that elects new ADS officers.

Nominating Committee report: The committee (William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., chair; Connie Eble, Sali Tagliamonte) proposes:

Vice President and program chair for two-year term 2013-14, succeeding to the presidency 2015-16: Robert Bayley, University of California Davis.

Member of the Executive Council for the four-year term 2013-16: Alexandra D’Arcy, University of Victoria.

Member at large of the Nominating Committee for the two-year term 2013-14: David Bowie, University of Alaska Anchorage.

Additional nominations may be made by a petition signed by at least ten members in good standing, to be received by the Executive Secretary no later than December 17.

Those elected take office after the conclusion of the 2013 Annual Meeting.

ADS Session 1
4:30 – 6:00 p.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: Anne Curzan, U of Michigan

4:30 Jeffrey Reaser (North Carolina State University). “Using professional development webinars to increase teachers’ linguistic knowledge.”

5:00 Anastasia Nylund (Georgetown University). “Perceptual dialectology across social and geographic borders: Language awareness among residents of Washington, DC.”

5:30 Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (The Ohio State University) and Amber Torelli (The Ohio State University). “‘Bitch, I’m from Cleveland, you have the accent’: Tracking enregisterment on Twitter.”

Words of the Year Nominations
6:15 – 7:15 p.m. Provincetown Room
Chair: Ben Zimmer, Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus.

Open meeting of the New Words committee; ADS members and friends welcome. This meeting reviews nominations for Words of the Year 2012. Final candidates will be identified in preparation for the vote at 5:30 p.m. Friday.

Sister Society Meet-and-Greet Reception
8:30 – 10:00 p.m. Grand Ballrom Salon D
Cash bar; hosted by SSILA.

ADS Session 2
8:30-10:30 a.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: David Bowie, U of Alaska Anchorage

8:30 Nicole Rosen (University of Lethbridge). “Latter-day Saints as a linguistic enclave in southern Alberta.”

9:00 Grant Eckstein (University of California, Davis) and Dan Villarreal (University of California, Davis). “LDS scripture-speech: Religious practice and sociophonetic variation.”

9:30 Charles Boberg (McGill University). “Continental divide: The U.S.-Canada border in North American English.”

10:00 Robert J. Podesva, Jeremy Calder, Hsin-Chang Chen, Annette D’Onofrio, Isla Flores Bayer, Seung Kyung Kim, and Janneke Van Hofwegen (all of Stanford University). “The status of the California Vowel Shift in a non-coastal, non-urban community.”

ADS Session 3
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: Lauren Hall-Lew, U of Edinburgh

11:00 Aaron Dinkin (Swarthmore College). “Changing roles of regional boundaries and isoglosses.”

11:30 Maeve Eberhardt (University of Vermont). “Intraspeaker variation, stancetaking, and post-vocalic /r/ on ‘Say Yes to the Dress.’”

12:00 Ann Marie Olivo (Rice University) and Chris Koops (University of New Mexico). “Lowering of upgliding vowels in New York City English.”

ADS Session 4
1:30-3:30 p.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: Kate Remlinger, Grand Valley State U

1:30 Jennifer Renn (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Catherine Darrow (Abt Associates), and David Dickinson (Vanderbilt University). “An Analysis of Language Use by African American Preschool Teachers.”

2:00 Mary Kohn (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Charlie Farrington (University of Oregon). “‘Girls say I sound country’: Correlating African American metalinguistic awareness with vowel production.”

2:30 Kirk Hazen (West Virginia University). “Finding the forest among the trees: Multiple variables for multiple speakers.”

3:00 Jack Grieve (Aston University) and Costanza Asnaghi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore). “A lexical dialect survey of American English using site-restricted web searches.”

ADS Session 5
3:45-5:15 p.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: Steve Kleinedler, American Heritage Dictionary

3:45 William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (University of Georgia and University of Oulu), Ilkka Juuso (University of Oulu), and C. Thomas Bailey (University of Georgia). “Computer simulation of dialect feature diffusion.”

4:15 Carolyn McCaskill, Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, and Joseph Hill. “The intersection of African American English and Black American Sign Language.”

4:45 Joan Hall and Luanne von Schneidemesser (DARE). “Ongoing work on the Dictionary of American Regional English.”

Words of the Year Vote
5:30 – 6:30 p.m., Grand Ballroom Salons B/C/D

Words in half a dozen categories as well as a Word (or Phrase) of the Year 2012 will be chosen from the slate of nominees determined at Thursday evening’s meeting. Before each vote, brief statements will be invited from advocates for or against the candidates.

The hour will begin with the American Name Society’s vote on its choice of Name of the Year. All ADS members, ANS members, and friends are welcome to participate.

Bring-Your-Own-Book Exhibit and Reception
6:45-7:45 p.m., Provincetown Room

Bring your new books; we’ll have tables where you can display them.

Special Session: Digital DARE
7:30–8:20 a.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: Joan H. Hall, DARE.
Presenter: Emily Arkin, Harvard University Press.
Arkin, Editor for Digital Publication Development at Harvard University Press, will offer a look at the future digital DARE and solicit feedback on its potential features and functionality.

ADS Session 6
8:30-10:00 a.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: Allison Burkette, U of Mississippi

8:30 Yuri Yerastov (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania). “Transitive be perfect in North America: A comparative corpus study.”

9:00 David Durian (College of DuPage). “On the inception and development of the Canadian Shift in the Midland: Some real and apparent time observations.”

9:30 Katie Carmichael (The Ohio State University). “R-lessness in Greate(r) New O(r)leans.”

ADS Session 7
10:30 a.m.-12:00 noon, Provincetown Room
Chair: Yuri Yerastov, Kutztown U of Pennsylvania

10:30 Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University), Hayley Heaton (University of Michigan), and Amanda Eads (North Carolina State University). “Lebanese English in the American South: Dialect accommodation and the recession of substrate.”

11:00 Cara Shousterman (New York University). “Speaking English in Spanish Harlem: Dialect change in Puerto Rican English.”

11:30 Philip M. Carter (Florida International University). “Sociolinguistic and social psychological motivation for loss: Mapping the perception of Spanish and English among Miami Latinos.”

ADS Annual Luncheon
12:15-1:45 p.m., St. Botolph Room

Speaker: ADS President Luanne von Schneidemesser, Dictionary of American Regional English. Topic: “Bubblers, Schnibbles, Lawyers, and Cheeseheads: Linguistic Outreach. The Wisconsin Idea.”

Menu: Traditional New England lobster roll, kettle chips and cole slaw; greens salad with gingered beets, goat cheese, pumpernickel croutons and apple cider dressing; apple tart; rolls and butter, coffee or tea.

Cost is $40. Students who are members of ADS may attend free. Reservations may be made in advance with ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf, americandialect@mac.edu.

ADS Session 8
2:00-4:00 p.m., Provincetown Room
Chair: tba

2:00 David Bowie (University of Alaska Anchorage), Jessa Joehnk (Middlebury College), and Peter Kudenov (University of Alaska Anchorage). “Regional dialect diversity in south-central Alaska.”

2:30 Jon Bakos (Oklahoma State University). “Bringing the thunder: A first look at the vowel system of Oklahoma.”

3:00 Patricia Cukor-Avila (University of North Texas), Lisa Jeon (University of North Texas), and Patricia C. Rector (University of North Texas). “‘Texas twang’ and ‘Southern drawl’: How Texans perceive regional variation from the Panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley.”

3:30 Stefan Dollinger (University of British Columbia Vancouver). “Taking on take up: The 49th parallel as a persisting linguistic isogloss.”

Each year since 1990, the American Dialect Society has chosen a word of the year at its annual meeting. We’ll do it again in January in Boston, Massachusetts, and we’re asking for your word-of-the-year nominations.

Nominations can be sent by email to woty@americandialect.org, tweeted to the Twitter user name @americandialect or using the hashtag #woty12, or they can be posted on our Facebook page.

They will be considered for the American Dialect Society’s 23rd annual word-of-the-year vote, the longest-running vote of its kind in the world and the word-of-the-year event up to which all word-of-the-year votes lead.

Formal nominations will be made on at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, January 3, and the final vote will be held at 5:30 p.m. Friday, January 4, both at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. Both events are open to the public and press.

The best “word of the year” candidates will be:

— demonstrably new or newly popular in 2012
— widely and/or prominently used in 2012
— indicative or reflective of the popular discourse
— not a peeve or a complaint about overuse or misuse

Multi-word compounds or phrases that act as stand-alone lexical items are also welcomed.

Sub-categories for “word of the year” include most useful, most creative, most unnecessary, most outrageous, most euphemistic, most likely to succeed, and least likely to succeed.

Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as “vocabulary item” — not just words but phrases. The words or phrases do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year, in the manner of Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

The vote is informed by the members’ expertise in the study of words and language, but it is far from a solemn occasion.

Members in the 123-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars.

In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be officially inducting words into the English language. Instead, they are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining.

Jon Bakos (Oklahoma State University)

Bringing the thunder: A first look at the vowel system of Oklahoma

This paper describes the current vowel system of Oklahoma, using recently collected data from the Research on the Dialects of English in Oklahoma (RODEO) project. This presentation will examine the wordlist and reading passage tasks from 25 Oklahoman RODEO subjects.

This paper will show Oklahoman empathy for Southern dialect practices, but without universal use of them. Most interviewed respondents employ Southern features like the pin/pen merger and fronting of /u/, but Oklahomans appear reluctant to use socially emblematic Southern features in formal contexts. This paper will suggest reasons for these differences and discuss the Oklahoma system as a whole.

Charles Boberg (McGill University)

Continental Divide: the U.S.-Canada border in North American English

This paper examines the current linguistic status of the U.S.-Canada boundary, as well as regional differences between western and eastern Canada, with a new set of data on variation in vocabulary, phonemic incidence and spelling from a questionnaire completed by 101 participants in 2012: 34 Americans and 67 Canadians. The biggest national difference arises in spelling (e.g., American center and color v. Canadian centre and colour). Mean differences in vocabulary (soda v. pop; faucet v. tap, etc.) and phonemic incidence (different pronunciations of words) are comparatively small. Comparisons with previous reports on these variables demonstrate several changes in progress.

David Bowie (University of Alaska Anchorage)
Jessa Joehnk (Middlebury College)
Peter Kudenov (University of Alaska Anchorage)

Regional dialect diversity in south-central Alaska

English-speaking settlement is relatively recent in Alaska, but with regional differences in settlement patterns. Therefore, an investigation into regional linguistic differences can give insight into founder effects versus dialect leveling. We recorded 30 Alaskans reading “Comma gets a cure” and a word list, and took midpoint measurements of the canonical vowels of English for each speaker. We found that Alaskans generally participate in the California Shift, but individuals from Anchorage exhibit such features more strongly and consistently than others. We suggest that dialect leveling has occurred in south-central Alaska, with founder effects possibly having been masked in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (The Ohio State University)
Amber Torelli (The Ohio State University)

“Bitch, I’m from Cleveland, you have the accent”: Tracking enregisterment on Twitter

Campbell-Kibler (2012) suggested that the Inland North in Ohio is becoming enregistered as the “Cleveland” or “northern” accent, but is contested. The current paper tests and extends this work, analyzing spontaneous commentary in 722 Tweets mentioning “accent” and Ohio, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati or Dayton. Overall, the data present a fractured view, with some Tweeters perceiving Ohio speech as accented, others expressing ambivalence and still others adhering to the “non-accent” ideology. Finally, we note the strong presence of African Americans in this data, suggesting a need for work on African American perceptual dialectology.

Katie Carmichael (The Ohio State University)

R-lessness in Greate(r) New O(r)leans

New Orleans has become more r-ful over time (Reinecke 1951; Brennan 1983; Mucciaccio 2009), although variable r-lessness is still common in the blue collar suburb of Chalmette. Hurricane Katrina caused many Chalmatians to relocate to wealthy, r-ful suburbs on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain (Lasley 2012). Younger Chalmatians-both those who live in Chalmette Post-Katrina and those who have since relocated to the Northshore-are more r-ful than older speakers, however there is no difference in levels of r-fulness between Chalmette and Northshore Chalmatians. Interview commentary suggests that r-lessness is used by Northshore Chalmatians to express ties to Chalmette.

Phillip M. Carter (Florida International University)
Andrew Lynch (University of Miami)
David Neal (Empirica Research, University of Miami)

Sociolinguistic and social psychological motivation for loss: Mapping the perception of Spanish and English among Miami Latinos

This study applies the matched-guise technique, introduced by Lambert et al. (1960), to the study of Spanish/English bilingualism in metropolitan Miami.180 participants listened to four speakers in two guises (Spanish and English) and rated each on a 7-point Likert-scale for a range of personal characteristics. They then answered hypothetical questions about each speaker’s estimated income, profession, and family history. Results show complex interactions between listener ethnicity, language perception, and political ideology. Surprisingly, all participants showed an implicit preference for the English guises for a majority of characteristics. This was true even for Latinos who at the explicit level valued bilingualism.

Patricia Cukor-Avila (University of North Texas)
Lisa Jeon (University of North Texas)
Patricia C. Rector (University of North Texas)

“Texas twang” and “Southern drawl”: How Texans perceive regional variation from the Panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley

Perceptual dialectology studies of the U.S. suggest Texas is a homogeneous speech community. Recent perceptual dialectology research in Texas, however, suggests Texans perceive both distinct and overlapping dialect areas within the state and they have similar opinions about the variety spoken in those areas. This study analyzes the geospatial distinction Texans perceive between Drawl and Twang and how their perceptions correlate geographically with two other perceptual categories, Southern and Country. Correlation tests between demographic information and the perceptual data also reveal how respondents’ perceptions are stratified by sex, age, ethnicity, time spent living in Texas, and self-identification as “Texan.”

Aaron Dinkin (Swarthmore College)

Changing roles of regional boundaries and isoglosses

The present-day southern and eastern boundaries of the Northern Cities shift match early settlement patterns; in mid-20th century dialectology the same geographical boundaries were isoglosses for many now-obsolete lexical variables. Two present-day lexical variables in New York State—soda/pop and penultimate secondary stress in elementary—exhibit isoglosses that match boundaries of culturally recognizable regions such as “Upstate”, but don’t match current phonetic isoglosses. I hypothesize that lexical variables develop along boundaries that are salient when they originate, but phonetic features developing along the same boundaries may become evident only later: “yesterday’s lexical isoglosses are tomorrow’s phonetic isoglosses”.

Stefan Dollinger (UBC Vancouver)

Taking on take up: the 49 th parallel as a persisting linguistic isogloss

This talk explores a semantic variable with the lexical item “take up”, in the meaning of ‘going over the correct answers for a test/exam/quiz’. The meaning is undocumented in non-Canadian sources, but Canadian sources do not propose a Canadian status. A written questionnaire study on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border reveals that the meaning is wide-spread in Canada, but virtually unknown in the USA. Within Canada, Ontario is its location of origin. The meaning appears to be a Canadian innovation that is currently spreading across Canada, thus reinforcing the international border as a semantic isogloss that is sensitive to subtle denotational differentiation.

David Durian (College of Dupage)

On the inception and development of the Canadian Shift in the Midland: Some real and apparent time observations

In this paper, we trace the development of the Canadian Shift in the US Midland back to its inception, using a mix of both real and apparent time data collected in the Columbus, OH. We do so via statistical analysis of instrumentally recorded normalized format data collected across 4 generations of speakers. A total of 62 speakers, born between 1896 and 1991, comprise this data set. Our analysis is presented as a series of linear mixed effects regression (lmer) analyses that allow us to watch the Canadian Shift develop and unfold in real and apparent time in our data.

Maeve Eberhardt (University of Vermont)

Intraspeaker variation, stancetaking, and post-vocalic /r/ on “Say Yes to the Dress”

In sociolinguistic research, explanations of intraspeaker variation vary widely. I test the hypothesis that intraspeaker variation is rooted in interactional stancetaking by examining post-vocalic /r/ among 5 bridal consultants on the reality “docusoap” Say Yes to the Dress, which focuses on wedding gown sales in a NYC bridal salon. Previous work shows that consultants’ use of post-vocalic /r/ correlates with the bride’s dress budget. Qualitative analyses suggest speaker choices are connected to stances taken at the moment of speaking. The current paper tests this quantitatively, tracking consultants’ use of /r/, to see if this variation correlates with specific stance moves.

Grant Eckstein (University of California, Davis)
Dan Villarreal (University of California, Davis)

LDS Scripture-Speech: Religious Practice and Sociophonetic Variation

This study responds to the relative lack of sociolinguistic research using religion as a social factor. In particular, we investigate a religion-specific prosodic observation by describing and examining LDS scripture-speech, a unique speech genre associated with the reading of scripture by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). We analyze the speech of selected active LDS speakers while reading a secular passage and a scripture passage for the prosodic features of pitch, amplitude, and duration. We consider the ways in which LDS members adopt scripture-speech and potentially index their religious identity via this speech genre.

Jack Grieve (Aston University)
Costanza Asnaghi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)

A Lexical Dialect Survey of American English Using Site-Restricted Web Searches

This paper presents the results of an analysis of regional lexical variation in American English based on data collected through site-restricted web searches using Google. This new method for quickly gathering dialect data is first introduced and evaluated by mapping lexical alternation variables with known distributions in American English. The results of a larger lexical dialect survey are then presented, including the results of an aggregated analysis that identifies the most common patterns of regional lexical variation in Modern American English.

Joan Houston Hall (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Luanne von Schneidemesser (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Ongoing work on the Dictionary of American Regional English

Although DARE has reached Z, the work is not finished. We will present an overview of volume VI, due out in January 2013 with its maps, indexes, and data, and show a short preview of the digital edition, scheduled for late 2013. New fieldwork has been proposed to test an online survey to investigate how American English has changed over the last half-century. In addition, DARE‘s original 1,843 audio recordings will be made widely available for use by scholars after the removal of all personal information is completed, planned for 2014.

Kirk Hazen (West Virginia University)

Finding the forest among the trees: Multiple variables for multiple speakers

Traditionally, variables in regional dialectology and variationist analysis have been analyzed individually, allowing researchers to consider both linguistic and social factors within variables, but questions about cross-variable comparisons remain. This paper employs completed studies to determine how speakers coordinate their cross-variable patterns and provides the opportunity to determine whether variables pattern similarly across speakers. One benefit of cross-variable analysis is that the social categories formed a priori can be reconfigured based on observable distinctions. This approach also creates the opportunity to develop a scalar index of vernacularity.

Mary Kohn (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Charlie Farrington (University of Oregon)

‘Girls say I sound country’: Correlating African American metalinguistic awareness with vowel production

We analyze the speech of 22 African Americans from Piedmont, North Carolina, using self-defined language descriptions to explore the relationship between linguistic use and linguistic self-awareness. Speakers were asked questions that focused on metalinguistic awareness, including whether they speak a non-standard dialect. Results indicate that speakers who self-describe as sounding country or non-standard have Southern Vowel Shift features while speakers who self-describe as sounding white, standard, or distance themselves from non-standard speech show no evidence of Southern Shifting. Speakers who do not self-categorize show variable patterns. These data indicate that speakers self-categorize regionality and ethnicity based in part on vowel patterns.

William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. (University of Georgia and University of Oulu)
Ilkka Juuso (University of Oulu)
C. Thomas Bailey (University of Georgia)

Computer simulation of dialect feature diffusion

Computer simulation is the only practical way to model diffusion. This paper describes the use of cellular automata to model dialect feature diffusion as the adaptive aspect of the complex system of speech. Throughout hundreds of iterations that correspond to the daily interaction of speakers across time, we can watch regional distributional patterns emerge as a consequence of simple update rules. The key feature of our simulations is validation with respect to distributions known to occur in survey data. Our successful simulation confirms our complex systems approach, and also suggests how we can simulate features among different social groups.

Carolyn McCaskill, Gallaudet University
Ceil Lucas, Gallaudet University
Robert Bayley, University of California, Davis
Joseph Hill, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

The intersection of African American English and Black American Sign Language

This presentation reports on the intersection of African American English (AAE) and a variety of American Sign Language (ASL) used by Black signers and known as Black ASL. Based on an extensive videotaped corpus collected from 96 African American signers in the southern United States, we explore the geographical and social conditions that led to the development of Black ASL.Young Black signers spontaneously produce and discuss words and phrases from AAE that have made their way into Black ASL. These AAE features in Black ASL show the effects of mainstreaming programs, including contact with hearing AAE speakers, and an increased focus on the learning of spoken English.

Ann Marie Olivo (Rice University)
Christian Koops (University of New Mexico)

Lowering of upgliding vowels in New York City English

We examine the phonologically parallel lowering of the non-low upgliding vowels /i, e, u, o/ in the variety of New York City English (NYCE) spoken by three generations of native Long Islanders. For each for the four vowels, lowering is restricted to word-final, open syllables. The mid vowels, especially /e/, show a larger split between lowering and non-lowering contexts than the high vowels. We go on to explore the social distribution and historical trajectory of this feature, as well as how lowering co-varies with the presence of other, better documented traditional NYCE features such as vocalization of coda-/ɹ/ and backing of /aɪ/.

Anastasia Nylund (Georgetown University)

Perceptual dialectology across social and geographic borders: Language awareness among residents of Washington, DC

Previous studies of areas neighboring Washington, DC, attribute receding Southern features to orientation to ‘cosmopolitan’ cities including DC. As DC becomes ‘less Southern’, how do residents describe their own speech and social correlates of ‘accent’? Evidence from sociolinguistic interviews and a survey suggests that (a) Dialect awareness is largely non-specific; DC is seen as ‘cosmopolitan’ and surrounded by ‘accented’ areas; (b) African Americans are viewed as ‘accented’ by non-AAs; (c) African Americans reject ideas of race-linked dialect difference as essentialist. This paper contributes to our understanding of language awareness in marginal communities and the process of enregisterment in progress.

Robert Podesva (Stanford University)
Jeremy Calder (Stanford University)
Hsin-Chang Chen (Stanford University)
Annette D’Onofrio (Stanford University)
Isla Flores-Bayer (Stanford University)
Seung Kyung Kim (Stanford University)
Janneke Van Hofwegen (Stanford University)

The Status of the California Vowel Shift in a Non-Coastal, Non-Urban Community

This study investigates three dimensions of the California Vowel Shift (CVS) — fronting of back vowels, nasal pattern of TRAP, and LOT-THOUGHT merger — in 32 speakers from Shasta County, California, a Northern, inland community. While all speakers participate in the shift, younger speakers show more advanced patterns. Additionally, speaker gender and orientation to town versus country condition the backing of TRAP. Data suggest that as the CVS spreads from urban centers, certain CVS features retain associations with the metropolis while others become more widespread indices of California authenticity. Shasta County speakers use this difference to negotiate non-urban, but nevertheless Californian, identities.

Jeffrey Reaser (North Carolina State University)

Using professional development webinars to increase teachers’ linguistic knowledge

While it has been acknowledged that teachers ought to be sociolinguistically aware, pre-service teacher education programs typically leave them without sophisticated knowledge about language variation. This paper describes the construction and implementation of a professional development webinar for in-service teachers to learn about sociolinguistic information and become proficient in teaching the Voice of North Carolina dialect awareness curriculum. The teachers’ reactions to the webinar are also examined, including the connections they made between sociolinguistic information and their classrooms. Finally, information from follow up with webinar participants reveals the effects of the experience on teachers and their fall 2011 teaching.

Jennifer Renn (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Catherine Darrow (Abt Associates)
David Dickinson (Vanderbilt University)

An Analysis of Language Use by African American Preschool Teachers

While caregiver and peer language have been linked to children’s linguistic development, little work has considered teacher language as an early influence. To investigate this question, this paper examines teacher language from Head Start classrooms in the southeastern U.S. Language samples from two contexts that differed in formality were collected from 44 African American teachers. Results show that teachers used more complex syntactic constructions and more total words in the more formal setting, but dialect density did not differ significantly. Subsequent analyses suggest that while measures of teacher complexity were linked to growth in children’s language, teacher vernacularity was not.

Nicole Rosen (University of Lethbridge)

Latter-day Saints as a linguistic enclave in southern Alberta

Using the Southern Alberta Corpus of English (Rosen 2012), I investigate two Canadian dialect features: the raising of /æ/ before /g/, and the Canadian shift (Boberg 2008, 2010) among Latter-Day Saints (LDS) and non-LDS living in Southern Alberta. Results show that LDS are not participating in the distinguishing Canadian changes in the same way as other Canadians, supporting Meechan (1998) and showing that the LDS form a linguistic enclave within Southern Alberta.

Cara Shousterman (New York University)

Speaking English in Spanish Harlem: Dialect Change in Puerto Rican English

While much research in the field of social dialectology has focused on African American English and to a lesser extent Puerto Rican English, the interaction between these two nonstandard dialects remains relatively under-investigated. The current study explores how community change is reflected in language, by examining the English of U.S-born Puerto Rican-identified speakers across several generations who live in East Harlem and report varying amounts of contact with African Americans. This research offers perspective on how and why urban dialects change over time by looking at prosodic rhythm-measured using the Pairwise Variability Index–across different generations of speakers.

Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University)
Hayley Heaton (University of Michigan),
Amanda Eads (North Carolina State University)

Lebanese English in the American South: Dialect accommodation and the recession of substrate.

A cohesive Lebanese community has existed in North Carolina for over a century, raising issues about the role of substrate features and the accommodation of Southern English. The acoustic analysis of vowel systems, syllable timing, and voice-onset timing (VOT) along with the analysis of selected morphosyntactic analyses demonstrates that Lebanese born in North Carolina do not maintain substrate influence. Selected aspects of Southern vowels are accommodated, but accommodation avoids socially stigmatized grammatical features. The pattern, which contrasts with other Southern ethnolinguistic repertoires, is explained in terms of community values that underscore upward mobility and educational and social status achievement.

Yuri Yerastov (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania)

Transitive be perfect in North America: A comparative corpus study

In Canadian English, as well as some dialects of American English, there occurs a transitive be perfect construction, limited to three participles only, e.g. I’m done dinner, I’m finished my homework, I’m started this project. This paper tracks the geographical distribution of the construction in Canada and the US through a comparative corpus study of North American news media. The results show that the done dinner construction is widespread in Canadian English, and marginal in American English, and that it is distributed proportionate to population size across Canada.

Vice President and program chair for two-year term 2013-14, succeeding to the presidency 2015-16: Robert Bayley, University of California Davis.

Member of the Executive Council for the four-year term 2013-16: Alexandra D’Arcy, University of Victoria.

Member at large of the Nominating Committee for the two-year term 2013-14: David Bowie, University of Alaska Anchorage.

Additional nominations may be made by a petition signed by at least ten members in good standing, to be received by Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf no later than December 17.

Those elected take office after the conclusion of the 2013 Annual Meeting.

Any student, graduate or undergraduate, is eligible. Any ADS member may nominate a candidate by sending an explanatory letter of recommendation to President Luanne von Schneidemesser at lvonschn@wisc.edu. Relevant attachments may be included with the recommendation.

This year’s deadline for nominations is November 16.

Monday, August 13 is the deadline for proposals for 20-minute presentations. All you need is a title and an abstract of 150 to 300 words. Send it via e-mail to Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf at americandialect@mac.edu.

Presenters must be current members of the American Dialect Society join here.

Audio-visual equipment: An LCD projector will be available for all presentations along with a microphone. If you will need other equipment, please say so when you send your proposal.

Scheduling: If you have a preference for day or time of your presentation, please indicate that too. We cannot guarantee the time you prefer, but the program committee will try to accommodate you. The meeting will follow our customary schedule:

Thursday, January 3: Executive Council and annual business meeting in the afternoon. Program session in late afternoon, followed by Words of the Year nominations.

Friday, January 4: Programs sessions in morning and afternoon. Words of the Year vote and Bring-Your-Own-Book reception in the early evening.

Saturday, January 5: Program sessions in morning and afternoon; Annual Luncheon in between.

Proposals will be judged anonymously by a committee chaired by Jesse Sheidlower, ADS president-elect. If your proposal is accepted, you’ll be asked for an abstract of no more than 200 words for the LSA program.

Special sessions: If you would like to propose a special session with a number of presenters, don’t wait till August 13 but get in touch with the program chair right away at jester@panix.com.

Teaching: If you have an idea for a special session on teaching, send it directly to the chair of the Committee on Teaching, Anne Curzan, at acurzan@umich.edu.

Session chairs: If you’re interested in chairing a session, let the Executive Secretary know at americandialect@mac.edu.. Tell him any preference you have for time or topic.

Travel grants for students: Four travel grants of $500 each will be awarded to students whose papers have been chosen for the program. Furthermore, all students who are members of ADS are invited to attend the Annual Luncheon for free.

Travel grant for ADS member: The third annual Audrey Duckert Memorial Travel Award of $500 to attend the Annual Meeting will be given to an ADS member. The recipient will be chosen by ADS President Luanne von Schneidemesser. Applications in the form of a letter to President Schneidemesser will be due September 1, after the program for the Annual Meeting has been determined. Audrey Duckert was a long-time member of ADS and co-founder of the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Hotel and registration: ADS members will be eligible to reserve rooms and register for the meeting at LSA member rates. For details see the website www.lsadc.org.

Future LSA-ADS meetings: 2014 January 2–5, Hilton Minneapolis. 2015: January 8-11, Hilton San Francisco Union Square. 2016: January 7-10, Washington (D.C.) Marriott Marquis.

WOTY: As we have done for two decades now, we will choose candidates for Word of the Year on Thursday and vote for our WOTY the next day, with our Bring Your Own Book exhibit and reception immediately following. If you have a nominee for WOTY 2012, you can send it to our New Words Committee chair, Benjamin Zimmer, at bzimmer@thinkmap.com.

Topic: Social Factors in Language Variation and Language Attitudes

The American Dialect Society (ADS), Midwest Region

November 8-11, 2012
Held with the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA)
Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza
Cincinnati, Ohio

We welcome papers dealing with varieties of English and other languages spoken in the United States. Presentations may be based in traditional dialectology or in other areas of language variation and change, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, anthropological linguistics, folk linguistics, language and gender/sexuality, language attitudes and ideologies, pragmatics and politeness, linguistics in the schools, or critical discourse analysis.

Abstract Submission Deadline: April 30, 2012

Abstract Specifications: Email submissions only. Abstract should be an attachment of no more than 250 words, excluding title and references. Include word count at the end of the abstract, and omit any identifying information (name, affiliation, etc.) in the attached file. Include contact information, affiliation, and abstract title in the body of your email.

SEND ABSTRACTS TO:
Erica J. Benson
bensonej@uwec.edu
American Dialect Society, Midwest Secretary
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Membership to ADS is recommended. Membership is $50 ($25 for students) and includes a year’s subscription to the society’s journal, American Speech, and a copy of the Publication of the American Dialect Society (PADS). Membership information and application.

If accepted to the conference, membership to MMLA and registration to the MMLA convention are required. Membership is $60 for full professors, $55 for associate professors, $50 for assistant professors, $35 for part-time faculty, and $30 for students, independent scholars, and retirees. Discounts are available for multi-year memberships. Membership and registration Information on the MMLA website.