Linguistic Society of America

The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a professional society for linguists. It was founded in 1924 to advance linguistics, the scientific study of human language. The LSA has over 5,000 individual members and welcomes linguists of all kinds. It works to advance the discipline and to communicate findings in linguistics to a wider audience. Through its website, its annual and summer meetings, its biennial summer institutes, and its journal "Language", the LSA works to disseminate current research in linguistics and facilitate communication within the discipline. The Society also participates in the public discourse on language and linguistic issues, contributing to policy debates on issues such as bilingual education, "Ebonics", and the English-only movement.

About

The LSA was founded in 1924, and its first president was Hermann Collitz, elected in 1925. Many prominent linguists have served in this position, including Franz Boas (1928), Edward Sapir (1933), Zellig Harris (1955), Roman Jakobson (1956), Morris Halle (1974), and Peter Ladefoged (1978) among others. The current president of the LSA (2007) is Stephen R. Anderson.

Publications

The LSA publishes a quarterly journal, "Language" [http://www.lsadc.org/info/pubs-language.cfm] , consisting of major articles and shorter reports of original research, as well as review articles, book reviews, and book notices of recently published works. Journal articles cover all areas of the field and from all theoretical frameworks. The LSA also sponsors "eLanguage" [http://elanguage.net] , a platform for online, open-access journals. The LSA also awards recently published books the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award.

Meetings

Each year in early January, the LSA organizes an Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting is currently a four-day conference, with a program of talks, plenary speakers, symposia, and poster sessions for researchers to share their work. The 2008 Annual Meeting took place in Chicago, Illinois. The LSA also sponsors a biennial Summer Meeting, a conference that is primarily focused on graduate students, their research, and issues of concern to them.

Linguistic Institutes

In conjunction with a host institution, the LSA organizes a biennial Summer Institute, a six-week summer school for students, faculty, and others interested in linguistics can attend courses, talks, and workshops taught by experts in the field. The 2005 LSA Institute was hosted jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and by Harvard University. The 2007 Institute was hosted at Stanford University, and the 2009 Institute will be hosted at the University of California, Berkeley. Each Institute honors the contributions of particular linguists with their appointment by the LSA to titled chairs at the Institute: the Sapir chair in general linguistics, the Collitz Chair in historical linguistics, and (from 2005) the Ken Hale chair in linguistic fieldwork and the preservation of endangered languages.

Resolutions and Statements

The LSA takes a stand on many language-related issues, especially those relating to public policy. For instance, in 1987, the LSA officially took a stand against the English-only movement in the United States. The LSA statement argued that "English-only measures ... are based on misconceptions about the role of a common language in establishing political unity, and ... are inconsistent with basic American traditions of linguistic tolerance." In 1997, an LSA resolution supported the Oakland school-board in its attempt to favor teaching that is sensitive to the distinctive characteristics of African American Vernacular English (the so-called "Ebonics" debate). A 2001 resolution on sign languages "affirm [ed] that sign languages used by deaf communities are full-fledged languages with all the structural characteristics and range of expression of spoken languages" and lent the support of the LSA to a status for sign languages equal to that accorded to other languages in academic and political life.

External links

* [http://www.lsadc.org LSA website]
* [http://www.lsadc.org/info/lsa-pres.cfm Presidents of the LSA]
* [http://www.lsadc.org/info/pubs-language.cfm "Language", the official journal of the LSA]
* [http://www.elanguage.net eLanguage, a LSA-affiliated platform for online, open-access linguistics journals]
* [http://web.mit.edu/lsa2005/ 2005 Linguistic Institute (MIT)]
* [http://linginst07.stanford.edu/ 2007 Linguistic Institute (Stanford)]