purpose of WOTY contests

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:23 PM -0400 9/1/06, Grant Barrett wrote:
>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."

Perhaps we could say the election is solemn, but far from serious...

LH

>
>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/
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org