VOTE

[Megan Crowhurst]

Elections for officers in the International Gender and Language Association
will take place beginning today, Thursday, April 20. Ballots are due by 5
p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, April 27, and results will be
posted no later than Monday, May 1.

Send ballots to Megan Crowhurst at mcrowhurst at mail.utexas.edu.

**To maintain confidentiality, please don't send you ballot to the listserve!**

VOTING ELIGIBILITY: Only members of IGALA who are subscribers to the
listserve as of the posting of this announcement are eligible to vote, and only
votes received by the April 27 deadline will be counted.

There are ten available positions, four in the Executive Committee and six
in the Advisory Council. In returning your vote, please cut and paste 
the following short ballot (with your responses) so that I may 
conveniently process your vote.

SHORT BALLOT:  Please vote yes or no on each of the following.  A 
blank will not be recorded as a vote.

Thanks in advance for your participation.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Candidate for President:
Penelope Eckert		______

Candidate for President Elect:
Sally McConnell-Ginet	______

Candidate for Financial Officer:
Vicky Bergvall		______

Candidate for Secretary:
Sara Trechter		______

CANDIDATES FOR THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE:

Mary Bucholtz		______
Anna Livia		______
Bonnie McElhinny	______
Birch Moonwomon-Baird	______
Ingrid Piller		______
Yukako Sunaoshi		______
Kira Hall		______


Candidates' Statements.

Candidate for President of IGALA.
Penelope Eckert, Professor
Department of Linguistics
Stanford University/USA

I received my PhD from Columbia University, and have been teaching 
and doing research in sociolinguistics since 1973. My interest in 
language and gender developed from my work on phonological variation, 
as it became apparent that current perceptions and explanations of 
gender patterns in variation were inadequate at best, and sexist at 
worst.
I want to be the first President of IGALA because I have high hopes 
for this new organization, and I believe that I have the experience, 
the commitment and the energy to get it moving quickly and in the 
right direction.
The first few years of IGALA are going to be crucial ones, as we 
establish momentum building a strong, broad-based, and activist 
organization. At the moment, I see the major goals as:

 Supporting a healthy intellectual community. The interdisciplinary 
nature of gender studies requires special efforts to create a sense 
of coherence, and to engage linguists with work on gender in other 
fields. To foster exciting, innovative research, we should be 
organizing not only a yearly conference, but other venues for the 
exchange of ideas and debate.

 Intellectual outreach. IGALA should serve as a focus for inquiry, 
making research on language and gender available in a responsible way 
to academics and to the general public.

 Undertaking Advocacy. Gender research is still academically risky. 
We need to work to promote the study of language and gender in our 
own disciplines, and to create alliances across disciplines in 
support of people who do gender research.

Candidate for President-Elect

Sally McConnell-Ginet
Professor of Linguistics
Cornell University/USA

I came to linguistics via mathematical logic and philosophy of 
language, getting my Ph.D.from the University of Rochester in 1973, 
with a specialization in formal semantics and pragmatics.  It was 
from my feminist commitments, however, that my interest in language 
and gender developed.  In 1973, I first taught a course in language 
and gender in the Cornell Women's Studies Program.  Not long after, I 
began research in language and gender, drawing especially on my 
background in pragmatics and philosophy of language.
Mary Bucholtz, Megan Crowhurst, Sara Trechter, and others have done 
an amazing job in launching IGALA.  We need now to build on the 
energy and good will they and the many other list subscribers have 
generated.
How can we best develop a lively intellectual community among 
ourselves?  How can we best support young scholars just venturing 
into this area?  How can we connect our work to interests of 
colleagues who have not thought much about gender or about sexuality? 
To interests of colleagues who have not thought systematically about 
language?  To interests of those outside the academy?  How can 
language and gender scholarship inform engagement in the practical 
issues raised by feminists, queer activists, anti-racists?
I don't have the answers to these sweeping questions or to the more 
nitty-gritty institutional issues they bring with them.  I would, 
however, welcome the opportunity to help address them productively as 
vice-president/president-elect.

Candidate for Financial Officer

Vicky Bergvall, Associate Professor/Director of Graduate Studies
Rhetoric and Technical Communication
Humanities Division
Michigan Technological University/USA

I served on the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics 
(COSWL), appointed by the Executive Committee of the Linguistic 
Society of America (LSA), from Jan. 1992-Aug. 1994, as co-chair from 
Jan.  1993-Aug. 1993 and chair from Sept. 1993-Aug. 1994. On behalf 
of COSWL and the LSA, and with the much assistance, I organized an 
international conference on language and gender at the 1993 
Linguistic Institute at Ohio State University, "The Language-Gender 
Interface: Theories and Methods for Research and Teaching," in charge 
of logistics, local arrangements, finances, advertising, and 
abstracts.
I have co-edited a volume of papers with Janet Bing and Alice Freed, 
Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice 
(Longman, 1996). I've also published a number of articles on gender 
and language, including "Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Language 
and Gender" in Language in Society, 1999, and "An Agenda for Language 
and Gender Research for the Start of the New Millennium," in 
Linguistik Online, 1999.
Financial experience:
As Director of Graduate Studies, I presently manage a budget of over 
half a million dollars (graduate fellowships and teaching 
assistantships, etc.).  As primary coordinator of the 1993 summer 
COSWL Language and Gender, I organized and managed the funding for 
the conference (about $6000). I also worked for three years in a bank 
during and right after undergraduate school, in a range of positions 
from messenger to teller to head of computer operations.

Candidate for Secretary

Sara Trechter, Assistant Professor of English/Linguistics
Department of English
California State University, Chico/USA

My goal in running for secretary of IGALA is very specific-to 
facilitate the greatest amount of respectful communication among 
different voices in the organization as possible while moving forward 
in an efficient manner.  Through a continuation of GALA-L, public 
reports and agendas for meetings and bi-monthy updates, I hope to 
keep the membership abreast of current events as well as solicit 
discussion of issues that need to be addressed in the future.  Many 
excellent ideas are lost or doomed to repetitious discussion for lack 
of an institutional memory when the loudest and longest messages are 
those that are taken up.  As an accurate recorder and active reminder 
of the diverse ideas already generated on GALA-L,  I hope to assist 
in making IGALA a successful association.

I came to gender and language through an interest in 
comparative-historical indigenous languages of the Americas, where 
linguistic accounts of gender were minimal and often inaccurate or 
exoticized.  I see increased field research on gender in minority 
languages and dialects as a vital goal for our field.  My book 
Gendered Voices in Lakhota is forthcoming from Oxford University 
Press. Other gender and language publications in Reinventing 
Identities and Issues in Applied Linguistics. Previous member of the 
Linguistic Society of America Committee on the Status of Women in 
Linguistics.  Current member executive board for the Society for the 
Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas and the LSA 
Committee on Endangered Languages. Co-facilitator of GALA_L.

Candidates for Advisory Council Member

Mary Bucholtz
Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Discourse Studies
Department of English
Texas A&M University/USA

IGALA is significant not only for the professionalization of our 
(inter)discipline but more importantly for its role in creating a 
worldwide community of scholars and students with a commitment to the 
study of language, sexuality, and gender. To that end, as a member of 
the Advisory Council I will work to promote meaningful communication 
between the members of IGALA and its governing board, as well as 
among the members of IGALA as a whole. There are many forms that such 
communication can take, including listserves (such as GALA-L, which 
should continue as the organization's official discussion list); 
websites (such as the Language and Gender Page that I have developed, 
which might serve as the basis for the IGALA website); and formal and 
informal gatherings at the annual IGALA conference and at other 
conferences where members of the organization assemble.
The Advisory Board represents all members of IGALA, and I will take 
an active role in regularly contacting members both individually and 
collectively to find out what their concerns are. I am especially 
committed to addressing issues of diversity (in every sense) that 
might otherwise be underrepresented or unrepresented within the 
organization. I will be a strong advocate for increased 
representation through appointments to the Advisory Board.
Background: Co-editor, Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially 
Constructed Self (Routledge, 1995); Co-editor, Reinventing 
Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse (Oxford University Press, 
1999); Series Editor, Oxford University Press Studies in Language and 
Gender; Co-organizer, Berkeley Women and Language Conference, 1992, 
1994; Co-facilitator, GALA-L.

Anna Livia
Visiting Assistant Professor
French Department
University of California, Berkeley/USA

I have a PhD in French Linguistics from UC Berkeley, a BA in French 
from University College London and a PGCE from the University of 
London. Before returning to Berkeley, I taught for three years at the 
University of Illinois. With Kira Hall, I edited Queerly Phrased, the 
first comprehensive anthology on language, gender and sexuality. 
Pronoun Envy, a study of the literary uses of linguistic gender in 
English and French is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. 
Currently I am working on gay textual communities in France. 
Specifically,I am looking at the kind of language generated and 
discourse structures used to create linguistic cohesion and social 
coherence on the Minitel, in personal ads and in grafitti.
The reason I want to be an advisor to IGALA is to make sure that 
research into language outside the usual face-to-face encounter 
continues to be considered with informed attention. As an Irish 
citizen working in the US, a linguist in a French department, and the 
lesbian mother of twins I believe I can provide insights from the 
margins and interdisciplinary skills to an increasingly hybrid field.

Bonnie McElhinny, Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Toronto/Canada

Background: Ph.D in Linguistics, Stanford University, 1993.  Ass't 
Prof of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 1995-present; Mellow 
Fellow in Cultural Studies, Washington University in St. Louis, 
1994-95; Fulbright Lecturer, Christina Institute for Women's Studies, 
Univ. of Helsinki, 1993.  Publications on language and gender have 
appeared in  Social Analysis, Ethnos, Gender and Discourse, Gender 
Articulated, Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching, Dislocating 
Masculinity, Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories,  and 
Language and Gender:  A Reader.
My main research concentration has been language, gender and 
political economy.  I have done or am doing projects on the 
linguistic strategies of women and men in traditionally masculine 
jobs (police officers in Pittsburgh), of women in a multicultural 
work co-op in California and of Filipina nannies working in Canada. 
In addition to furthering research on language and gender, I believe 
that we must use our skills to understand how gender works, in 
combination with other social categories, in our own university 
workplaces. We need more information on how certain ways of speaking 
are given value:  a group of graduate students and I have begun an 
analysis of the ways publication and citation rates are shaped by 
gender in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics.  This work 
has immediate practical applications to some of the questions 
currently being considered by IGALA, including whether to publish a 
journal on language and gender, how best to structure it to ensure 
strong contributions from as many different contributors as possible, 
understanding which subfields of linguistics and linguistic 
anthropology have been shaped by feminist enquiry and which have been 
attractive to and welcoming towards female researchers.

Birch Moonwomon-Baird
Qwest Communications/USA

I am a linguist with a decade and a half history of involvement in 
gender and language and sexuality and language work, including the 
coordination of the first two Berekely Women and Language Conferences 
with Berkeley colleagues (my degree 1991).  I have published for a 
number of years in the areas mentioned, mainly discourse analyses of 
lesbian language use.  An article based on my 1998 BWLC paper appears 
this May in the Journal of Sociolinguistics.  I teach gender and 
language and queer language courses when possible.

I want to see both gender and sexuality as such explored 
sociolinguistically.  Over years of work I have become convinced that 
social science and humanities approaches and a big mix-it-up 'tude 
toward this exploration is the way to go.  I would bring a long 
personal history of experience, appreciation for the different 
positions of the board's 'professional and political seats', and an 
identification with the concerns several of these represent: scholars 
beyond academia; those working on queer issues; and those addressing 
feminist concerns.

Ingrid Piller
Assistant Professor of English Linguistics
English Department
Hamburg University/Germany
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Hamburg

Ingrid Piller is an assistant professor of English linguistics at the 
University of Hamburg. Previously she taught at Ithaca College, NY, 
and the University of Technology in Dresden, where she also obtained 
her Ph.D (1995). She is the author of American Automobile Names 
(Essen, 1996).  Besides her research on trade names and consumer 
discourse, which has also been published in Anglia, Names, and 
Poetics Today, her research interests are in multilingualism, second 
language learning, language and gender. Her most current research 
project is on the linguistic practices of bilingual couples which is 
addressing issues of language choice, the linguistic construction of 
national and linguistic identity, and linguistic ideologies as gender 
issues.
Given that much language and gender research has been biased towards 
"English and gender", it is her hope that IGALA be a truly 
cross-cultural organization which embraces cross-cultural 
perspectives on language and gender. Such an integration of 
multilingual and cross-cultural perspectives is desirable both 
academically and politically.

Yukako Sunaoshi
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Japanese
Department of Asian Languages and Literatures/School of Asia Studies
The University of Auckland/New Zealand

I obtained my Ph.D. in sociolinguistics from the University of Texas 
Austin.  I have written on Japanese female managers' authoritative 
language use in the workplace.  My most recent language & 
gender-related work is about the role of Japanese female liaison 
officers at Japanese manufacturing plants in the US. 
Administratively, my academic interest in the area led me to serve as 
a student member of the Linguistic Society of America Committee on 
the Status of Women in Linguistics in 1996-98.
If I am elected as an Advisory Council member, my main contribution 
will be to bring in an insider-outsider perspective to IGALA.  By 
being in the US system (and now in the New Zealand system) as a 
Japanese for the last eight years, I have noticed tension between 
Japanese-trained and US-trained scholars when it comes to research on 
Japanese women's speech.  I have also noticed another challenge that 
foreign researchers like myself face when publishing in English. 
That is, I wonder if the findings of foreign scholars published in 
English may have a tendency to be overlooked.  If so, I believe the 
study of language and gender can be greatly enriched by becoming 
cognizant of this point.  My background, which both advantages and 
disadvantages me can and should be used to build IGALA.  I believe 
that utilizing my experience as an Asian, foreign, and female junior 
academic in American and New Zealand contexts will certainly help 
IGALA develop as an even more inclusive organization.

Kira Hall
Assistant Professor of Linguistic Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
Yale University

I see the formation of an international organization on gender and 
language as an important moment in the history of our field.  As a 
member of the Advisory Council for the new IGALA, I would work to 
bring innovation, diversity, and excellence to gender and language 
studies, as I first set out to do ten years ago as a graduate student 
in my vision of the 1992 Berkeley Women and Language Conference.  Now 
that I have moved from the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley 
to the Department of Anthropology at Yale, I believe it is crucial 
for us to foster more research in areas traditionally 
underrepresented in gender and language studies, as well as to 
encourage growth in newer interdisciplinary areas, so as to keep pace 
with an ever-changing theoretical landscape in the social sciences. 
I am especially interested in bringing more attention to the areas of 
language and sexuality;  language, nationalism, and postcolonialism; 
language and masculinity;  language, race, and ethnicity;  and 
language, migration, and diaspora.  Finally, my work in Hindi and in 
South Asian sociolinguistics has made it clear to me that IGALA must 
invite much more scholarship on languages other than English before 
gender and language studies can ever be viewed as a truly 
international field.


Relevant background:
Co-editor, _Queerly Phrased:  Language, Gender, and Sexuality_ 
(Oxford, 1997);  Co-editor, _Gender Articulated:  Language and the 
Socially Constructed Self_ (Routledge 1995);  Advisory Board, Oxford 
Studies in Language and Gender; Committee on the Status of Women in 
Linguistics, 1993-1995; Co-organizer, 1992 Berkeley Women and 
Language Conference;  Co-founder and facilitator for the electronic 
lists FLing and Gala-L.

~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'~~'
Megan Crowhurst, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics

Mailing address:	Calhoun 501
			The University of Texas at Austin
			Austin, TX  78712-1196
			USA

Phone: 512-471-1701, Fax:   512-471-4340
University mail code:  B5100
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