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.

To celebrate the publication of Volume V of DARE (Sl-Z) and the upcoming launch of the digital edition (2013), we are having a party in Madison on May 4, 2012, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

All ADS members (and like-minded language-lovers) are cordially invited. And if you can come a day early, we hope you will join us May 3rd from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. for a mini-conference on DARE and American dictionaries. Our speakers will be Erin McKean, Michael Adams, and Simon Winchester.

A block of rooms has been reserved at

The Campus Inn
601 Langdon Street
Madison, WI 53703
Toll-free number: 800-589-6285
Group Number: 118573
Group Name: DARE
Deadline for group rate: April 2, 2012

We hope to see you!

Joan Houston Hall
Chief Editor, DARE

UPDATE: Please also take a few moments to fill out this survey about how you currently use DARE. The DARE publishing program has so far produced four of the planned six volumes. Alongside the continuing print program, we are about to commence work on publishing the full DARE database as an online reference resource. As we plan this website, we would welcome your input on how DARE should be presented and used online. DARE Online is scheduled for launch in 2013. You may send the completed surveys to:

Emily Arkin
Harvard University Press
79 Garden Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
02138 USA
emily_arkin@harvard.edu

Photo by Jason Riggle.

Presiding at the Jan. 6 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.

“It’s a very old word, but over the course of just a few months it took on another life and moved in new and unexpected directions, thanks to a national and global movement,” Zimmer said. “The movement itself was powered by the word.”

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 122-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.

In a companion vote, sibling organization the American Name Society voted “Arab Spring” as Name of the Year for 2011 in its eighth annual name-of-the-year contest. It refers to popular political uprisings in Middle Eastern countries.

AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY VOTE TALLIES

The number after each nomination is the number of votes it received. 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

occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement. 82/174 WINNER

FOMO – acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” describing anxiety over being inundated by information on social media. 41/28

the 99%, 99 percenters – those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top moneymakers, the one-percenters. 43/24

humblebrag – expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter. 30

job creator – a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers. 4

MOST USEFUL

humblebrag – expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter. 87/121 WINNER

occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement. 70/102

FOMO – acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” describing anxiety over being inundated by information on social media. 25

tablet – lightweight portable computer with a touchscreen to input data. 30

MOST CREATIVE

Mellencamp – a woman who has aged out of being a “cougar” (after John Cougar Mellencamp). 103 WINNER

bunga bunga – name for sex parties allegedly involving former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. 21

kardash – unit of measurement consisting of 72 days, after the short-lived marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries (coined by Weird Al Yankovic). 82

put a bird on it – to add artistic flair to something, usu. used ironically or humorously. 23

MOST UNNECESSARY

bi-winning – term used by Charlie Sheen to describe himself pridefully, dismissing accusations of being bipolar. 77/156 WINNER

amazeballs – slang form for “amazing.” 82/85

planking – posing for a photograph, esp. in a public place, with one’s body in a stiff, prone position, for circulation online. 13

Qwikster : short-lived Netflix spinoff of its DVD rental service, separated from its streaming. 44

MOST OUTRAGEOUS

assholocracy – rule by obnoxious multi-millionaires. 166 WINNER

deather – one who doubts the official story of the killing of Osama bin Laden. 35

botoxionist – a doctor who administers Botox injections. 1

MOST EUPHEMISTIC

job creator – a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers. 111 WINNER

artisan, artisanal – faux-fancy term used to describe food and other products. 78

regime alteration – alternative to “regime change” promoted by Obama administration in some Middle Eastern countries. 19

sugar-coated Satan sandwich : something bad on the inside that looks good on the outside, as used by Missouri U.S Congressman Emanuel Cleaver. 1

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

cloud – online space for the large-scale processing and storage of data. 155 WINNER

Arab Spring – a series of popular uprisings in Middle Eastern countries against dictatorial regimes. 54

tiger mom, tiger mother – an exceedingly strict parent (after Amy Chua’s memoir, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”).

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

brony – adult male fan of the “My Little Pony” cartoon franchise. 103 WINNER

Tebowing – posing for photograph praying on one knee, after Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. 47

9-9-9 – tax plan proposed by Herman Cain (9% business tax, 9% personal income tax, 9% federal sales tax). 65

OCCUPY WORDS (new category)

the 99%, 99 percenters – those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top moneymakers, the one-percenters. n-percenters, n-percent. 219 WINNER

occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement. 17

people’s mic, human microphone – method of amplifying a person’s speech by having surrounding people repeat it line by line 7

twinkling – system of wiggly hand gestures to register approval or disapproval. 9

…

Read or download the entire press release in PDF form.

All previous years’ winners are here.

The criteria for nominations.

The official nominations will be determined during a public meeting held at the downtown Portland, Ore., Hilton, on Thursday, January 5, and will be available on this site at about 7:30. You must be at the meeting to officially nominate a word. The final 2011 word-of-the-year vote will be 5:30 p.m., Friday, January 6, at the same hotel and those results should be available by 7:30 p.m.

• “What we talked about in 2011,” a words-of-the-year column by Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Words committee and language columnist for the Boston Globe. His full list of nominees is here.

• Grant Barrett’s eighth annual New York Times words-of-the-year list.

• Nancy Friedman’s words-of-the-year list.

• David Barnhart’s nominations.

• Joe Clark’s 2011 Canadian words of the year.

• A master list of most the words suggested by the general public and others. We may have missed a few: by all means send them along to woty@americandialect.org

You may also be interested in this list of nominations for the “name of the year” from the American Name Society, and ADS member Fred Shapiro’s list of 2011 quotes of the year.

Updated Dec. 6, 2012: A special breakfast session devoted to the Dictionary of American Regional English has been added Saturday morning.

2012 American Dialect Society Annual Meeting Abstracts
2012 American Dialect Society Annual Meeting Schedule

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 Portland, Oregon, 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 #woty11, or they can be posted on our Facebook page.

They will be considered for the American Dialect Society’s 22nd 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 5, and the final vote will be held at 5:30 p.m. Friday, January 6, both at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower. Both events are open to the public and press.

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

— demonstrably new or newly popular in 2011
— widely and/or prominently used in 2011
— 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 122-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.

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 16.

This nomination will be voted on at the Society’s Annual Business Meeting, 3:00 p.m. Thursday, January 5, at the Hilton Portland, Salon II.

Those elected take office after the conclusion of this 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 14.

The Satellite Workshop for Sociolinguistic Archival Preparation will precede the 86th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in Portland, Oregon in 4-5 of January, 2012. The Workshop will begin at 10am on Wednesday, January 4 and continue through 3:00 PM on Thursday, January 5, and will be followed immediately by the full LSA, which continues until Sunday. You may register for the workshop by following the instructions below.

Please note that this session will begin at 10am on Wed, and will continue until the 4pm session of LSA/ADS on Thursday, so book your room and flights accordingly! The program for the workshop found at Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. by midOctober.

Charges: Note that the fee for LSA covers registration for the Satellite Workshop as well as for the LSA Meeting itself. More information about the LSA Meeting, as well as about the workshop can be found at http://www.lsadc.org/info/meet-annual.cfm (a preliminary program will be available in mid-October).

Registrants should go to the following link: http://www.lsadc.org/meetings/registration1.cfm?type=ssm.

Please note: for the “Choose Sister Society” field, you will select “Satellite Workshop for Sociolinguistic Archival Preparation” from the dropdown menu; the “Sister Society Passcode” is ARCHPREP2012 (all caps). You will be charged LSA member registration rates, which are $165 (regular/emeritus) or $60 (student).

When all information is completed, click the “Submit” button, check that all your information has been entered correctly, and click the “Confirm” button.

The Program:

The projected program for the workshop can be found on the LSA website as of mid-October. If you have specific questions about registration address them to David Robinson (drobinson@lsadc.org). There will be a certain amount of student funding [for which see below]. If you have a question about the planned fellowships or the specific program, please email Malcah@ldc.upenn.edu or ccieri@ldc.upenn.edu.

We hope to see you in Portland!

Student Funding:

NSF has permitted us to allot funding to cover two days of extra lodging at the conference hotel while the workshop is taking place for a certain number of students. We predict that this will permit 10-15 graduate students to take part in the workshop who otherwise would not be able to. This funding can be applied for at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GWHT3XW if the registration webpage does not redirect you there.

• STUDENT registrants who take the survey at that address will have their information passed to LDC. Fill in the answers to the questions, and we will try to see how many graduate students can be covered. Preference will be given to students who are planning to carry out fieldwork, or who have already begun to do so. Those who will receive the funds should be hearing back from LDC within the next month, so apply now!

Accommodations: Online registration for both the Winter Meeting as well as this special workshop is available through December 23, 2011. More information about hotel room reservations, available through December 15, is at https://lsadc.org/info/meet-annual.cfm#hotel-accommodations.