Conferences

“Jamal Khashoggi” Chosen 2018 Name of the Year

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi

“Jamal Khashoggi” was chosen the Name of the Year for 2018 by the American Name Society at its annual meeting in New York City on January 4, 2019.

The winner was also chosen ANS’s Personal Name of the Year. Jamal Khashoggi was a Washington Post journalist and critic of Saudi regime who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. His name is associated with the increasing threats that journalists face as they pursue their craft in a political atmosphere that brands them “enemies of the people” and creators of “fake news.” It is also significant as journalists have become more accurate in pronouncing the surname (Kha-SHOWG-zhee) as the name has remained in the news.

“Paradise” was chosen as the Place Name of the Year. The California city was largely leveled in the devastating Camp Fire in November. The town got its name in the 1860s, probably because of its picturesque setting. The power of this place name lies in the startling contrast between the original beauty that this toponym was chosen to represent and the catastrophic events that came to mark this community.  Within the United States, “Paradise” became common in wordplays such as “Paradise Lost”.  The name demonstrates not only sociocultural relevance, but also linguistic productivity.

“Gritty” was voted Trade Name of the Year. The new mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers, a professional hockey team that had until then lacked any mascot, made its debut on September 24, and immediately provoked a variety of responses. Left-wing activists made him a socialist meme: a blue-collar monster, reclaimed from marketing creators. On October 24 the Philadelphia City Council passed a formal resolution honoring Gritty, declaring that he honored the city’s spirit and passion. The name “Gritty” also is an inside joke used as a descriptor by fans for any player who isn’t the most athletically talented.

“Wakanda” was chosen Artistic Name of the Year. The fictional African country, created in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for their Black Panther comic, was brought to life in the 2018 film Black Panther.

“#MeToo” was chosen as the Miscellaneous Name of the Year. Although it originated in 2017, the linguistic and cultural significance of this term has continued unabated.  The once innocuous phrase of sympathy has turned into an international rallying cry for justice and survivors’ rights.  It is now the name of an international activist movement for survivors of sexual assault, the title of a documentary film, and a US Congressional Act, the “Member and Employee Training and Oversight on Congress Act”.

The American Name Society is a scholarly organization founded in 1951 devoted to studying all aspects of names and naming. The Name of the Year vote has been held since 2004. “Rohingya” was the 2017 Name of the Year. “Aleppo“won for 2016 , “Caitlyn Jenner” for 2015, “Ferguson” for 2014, “Francis” for 2013, and “Sandy” for 2012.

For further information contact Dr. Cleveland Evans, chair of the Name of the Year committee, at cevans@bellevue.edu or 402-210-7458.

Linguistics Beyond Academia SIG Events at LSA 2019

The Linguistics Beyond Academia Special Interest Group (SIG) is pleased to announce its activities at the 2019 LSA Annual Meeting in New York City:

Panel – Friday January 4, 3:30-5 pm in Liberty 3
“Linguists in the Workplace”

This panel features linguists from an array of professions beyond the professoriate (ie., “Career Linguists”), as well as representatives from the companies who hire them. Our career linguists will tell all about their journeys from PhD to the workplace, what motivated them to make the shift to the private sector, and the advantages (and sometimes disadvantages) of working outside of academia. To give a fuller picture of what life is like for career linguists, we will also hear from those who hire linguists to better understand what make a linguist a great candidate for numerous professional roles. Panelists hail from a variety of professional sectors, including language engineering, user experience research, nonprofit/program development, and diversity technology, to name a few. An audience Q&A will follow our panel discussion. Hosted by the LSA special interest group Linguists Beyond Academia, “Linguists in the Workplace” is for anyone interested in better understanding the array of options open to linguists as they navigate their careers post-PhD.

 

Mixer – Saturday January 5, 3:30-5 pm, in Liberty 3

The idea of the mixer is to create opportunities for fostering curiosity around professional applications of linguistics for the next generation of Career Linguists. It is not a job fair or formal interviews! The goal is to provide a setting for students to ask questions and discuss life outside of academia.

There will also be a number of career panels at the LSA and ADS conferences, as well as opportunities for grad students to sign up for one-on-one career mentoring.

Please join our Facebook group for updates, news, and more!

Second Revised Preliminary Schedule for the 2019 ANS Conference in New York, NY

The American Name Society is excited to share the second revised 2019 Conference Schedule for the upcoming annual conference in New York, NY, from January 3-6th, 2019. This is a newly revised schedule and supersedes the previous version. Strikethroughs indicate that a presenter has withdrawn from the conference.

For more information about the conference and registration materials, please visit the conferences page.

Please note this schedule may be subject to minor changes.

Call for Papers: CSSN: Canadian Society for the Study of Names, Vancouver, Canada, June 1-2 2019

The Canadian Society for the Study of Names (CSSN) / Société canadienne d’onomastique (SCO) will hold its annual meeting as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Canada, June 1 – 2, 2019, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. 

This year’s conference features a special presentation by Dr. Claire Boudreau, Chief Herald of Canada, on the topic, “The Representation of Names in Contemporary Canadian Heraldry: The Making of Canting Arms and What they Tell About Names and Naming.” They especially invite papers that address the representation of names in various forms or media, but we welcome presentations on any onomastic topic. Papers may be presented in either French or English. For further information, please see the full call for papers on the SCCN website.

 
 

Call for Papers: LxGr2019, Ormskirk, UK, June 22 2019

A symposium on lexis and grammar is scheduled to take placed on Saturday, June 22, 2019 at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk (UK).  Entitled Corpus Approaches to Lexicogrammar (LxGr2019), the focus of this event is Halliday’s view of lexis and grammar as ”complementary perspectives”.  LxGr is particularly interested in paper proposals that focus, for example, discuss different interpretations of the nature of lexicogrammar; operate within any theoretical approach that takes into account the interaction of lexis and grammar (e.g. Construction Grammar, LexicalGrammar, Pattern Grammar, Systemic Functional Grammar, Valency Grammar). 

If you would like to present, send an abstract of 500 words (excluding references) to Costas Gabrielatos (gabrielc@edgehill.ac.uk). Please make sure that the abstract clearly specifies the research questions or hypotheses, the corpus and methodology, the theoretical orientation, and the main findings.

The call for papers can be found here. The deadline for abstract submission is 17 February 2019.

Call for Papers: Conference on Lexicography in the Nordic Region, June 4-7 2019, Helsing­fors, Fin­land

From the 4th to the 7th of June 2019, Helsinki, Finland will be the site of a scientific conference on lexicography, “15 konferensen om lexikografi i Norden”. The primary languages of the conference are Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The deadline for submission of abstracts for 20-minute scientific presentations is December 31, 2018.  For more on this event, please consult the official conference website.

The conference is organized by the Institute for native languages, in cooperation with the University of Helsinki and the Nordic Association for Lexiography. The theme is: Dictionaries – by who, for whom and why? Other submissions on lexicography in theory and practice are welcome. The posts can be in the form of lectures or posts  Three plenary speakers have been invited: Anna Helga Hannesdóttir, Iztok Kosem and Nina Martola.

Call for Papers: International Conference on Verbal Humor, Alicante, Spain, Oct 23-25, 2019

From October 23-25, 2019, at Spain’s University of Alicante (San Vicente del Raspeig), a session of the International Conference on Verbal Humor will be held.  For this event, a special call for papers has been issued for a panel that will address the relationship between humor and irony. For more on the event, please consult the conference website. The deadline for submissions is January 31st, 2019. 

Keynotes speakers include:

  • Salvatore Attardo ( Texas A&M University – Commerce)
  • Tony Veale (University College Dublin)
  • Victor Raskin (Purdue University)
  • Nancy Bell (Washington State University)
  • Helga Kotthoff (University of Freiburg)

They welcome original papers, written either Spanish or English. Abstracts must be no longer than 350 words (without references). Each paper will be presented within a 20-minute period, plus 10 minutes for discussion and questions.

Revised Call for Nominations for the 2018 Name of the Year

The American Name Society requests nominations for the Names of the Year for 2018. The names selected will be ones that best illustrate, through their creation and/or use during the past 12 months, important trends in the culture of the United States. It is not necessary, however, for a nominated name to have originated in the US. Any name can be nominated as long as it has been prominent in North American cultural discourse during the past year. For example, the Overall Names of the Year for 2017 and 2016 were Rohingya and Aleppo. Charlie Hebdo, the title of the French satirical magazine, won Trade Name of the Year in 2015.

Nominations are called for in the five following categories:

  • Personal Names: Names or nicknames of individual real people, animals, or hurricanes.
  • Place Names: Names or nicknames of any real geographical location, including all natural features, political subdivisions, streets, and buildings. Names of national or ethnic groups based on place names would be included here.
  • Trade Names: Names of real commercial products, as well as names of both for-profit and non-profit incorporated companies and organizations, including businesses and universities.
  • Artistic & Literary Names: Names of fictional persons, places, or institutions, in any written, oral, or visual medium, as well as titles of art works, books, plays, television programs, or movies. Such names are deliberately given by the creator of the work.
  • Miscellaneous Names: Any name which does fit in the above four categories, such as names created by linguistic errors, names of particular inanimate objects other than hurricanes, names of unorganized political movements, names of languages, etc. In general, to be considered a name, such items would be capitalized in everyday English orthography.

Winners will be chosen in each category, and then a final vote will determine the overall Name of the Year for 2018. Anyone may nominate a name. All members of the American Name Society attending the annual meeting will select the winner from among the nominees at the annual ANS meeting in New York City, New York on January 4, 2019. The winner will be announced that evening at a joint celebration with the American Dialect Society. Advance nominations must be received before January 2, 2019. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the annual meeting. Please send your nominations, along with a brief rationale, by e-mail to either Dr. Cleveland K. Evans: <cevans@bellevue.edu> or Deborah Walker:<debwalk@gmail.com>

The revised Call for Nominations can be downloaded here.

Call for Papers: Sustainable Geography – Geographies of Sustainability, Trondheim, Norway, June 16-19 2019

The 8th Nordic Geographers Meeting will be held in Trondheim, Norway, June 16–19 2019 and includes a panel called “Tightening the noose – the impact of constricted migration policy on sexual and gender minorities”.

As neoliberal and populist policies are enforced in countries in the EU, borders are becoming increasingly difficult to cross and welfare regimes are weakened. The options for individuals to migrate to the EU are diminished and existing migrants are left with lesser resources in host societies. Contemporary cultural politics of immigration is also increasingly organized around cultural unfitness of migrants in the host
society. Simultaneously, Western democracies have gradually marketed tolerance of sexual diversity as a distinct and inherent characteristic of their culture, distinguishing them from the homophobic rest. This while establishing a sexual humanitarian apparatus that turns out to shape, in a restrictive way, the asylum system. In this call for session presentations, we ask for scrutiny of how these shifts are affecting sexual and gender minorities, who appear as paradoxical figures in these politics.

Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted to thomas.wimark@humangeo.su.se,  florent.chossiere@upem.fr, and deniz.akin@ntnu.no before the 10th of December. Authors will be notified about the status of their submission as soon as possible thereafter.

A PDF of this call for papers can be downloaded here.