purpose of WOTY contests

[Grant Barrett]

On Sep 1, 2006, at 11:23, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
> My sense is, however, that we tend to give the impression that WOTY
> is not entirely whimsy, and the press tends to take it much more
> seriously than that: in their minds, we ARE some prescriptivist
> authority who are making scholarly pronouncements—albeit with a
> good deal of jolly banter in the process—muddle-headed academics
> with nothing better to do with our time

For my part, I always tell the press that the vote is whimsical, not
serious, and that we are not a bunch of pointy-heads officially
inducting words into American English (just a bunch of pointy-heads
mouthing off in a playful environment).

However, I see that we have not clearly indicated this in our press
releases. Last year, for example, our press release said, "The
election is serious, based on members’ expertise in the study of
words, but it is far from solemn."

I'll make sure next year to confer with Allan and Wayne about better
wording for the press release so that the playfulness of the vote is
explained. I agree with Ron that everyone should clearly understand
that the vote's result is not meant to be an Official Pronouncement
from the Nation's Language Leaders Who Will Order Your Death If You
Use Bad Grammar.

As for the effectiveness of the vote in evangelizing ADS, note that
our web site traffic explodes in January. People do indeed absorb the
press reports and then google the organization's name. Whether this
has a salutary effect on member rolls, I cannot say. I have in the
past asked the Duke University Press for information on click-
throughs from our web site to theirs but the information has never
been forthcoming and I have not pressed the matter. For next year, I
will see about tracking such information myself.

Grant Barrett
VP of Communications and Technology, American Dialect Society
http://www.americandialect.org/

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