Annual Meeting: How Are We Doing

Annual Meeting: How Are We Doing?

We are grateful to the 64 LSA members who responded to the Annual Meeting questionnaire by the 15 April deadline (see March 2001 LSA Bulletin). All of their comments and suggestions have been forwarded to the Program Committee for consideration in planning future meetings. A summary of the responses follows.

Program Strengths

the only regular venue for all of linguistics
coverage of all major areas of linguistics
plenary sessions
COSWL sessions
reasonable hotel rates
affiliation with ADS, NAAHoLS, and SPCL

Program Weaknesses

program not open to alternative theories
conventional, unimaginative, and poorly presented papers
too many 15-minute papers

Program Suggestions

20-25 minute papers instead of 15-minute papers
more presentations in cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, phonetics, psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics
better organization of papers by topics
no conflicting phonetics and phonology sessions
no special sessions during the President's reception
no evening sessions
longer hours for the poster session and the book exhibit
add another day to the meeting

Session Suggestions

more handouts,
speakers stay strictly on schedule

Seventy-five percent of respondents were satisfied with the annual meeting dates, but others suggested moving the dates closer to New Year's, to the summer, or to the same time as MLA.

NOTE: The March 2001 LSA Bulletin also carried a ballot for members to use in voting on a sign language resolution passed at the 2001 business meeting. The deadline for returning the ballot is 1 July 2001. Members who have not already done so are encouraged to return the ballot by the deadline.