CRITICS: Welcome to CRITICS!

[Teun A. van Dijk]

(Please read this practical information about the CRITICS List)

W E L C O M E   T O   C R I T I C S !

Your name has just been added to the CRITICS e-mail list, either
because you are a member of the Board of the international CRITICS
Foundation or because your work is in the field of the
socio-political or critical study of language, discourse or
communication.

[If you do not want CRITICS messages, see below how to 'unsubscribe'].

AIMS
As explained in the general CRITICS information message, I hope this
list will be useful as an international forum for discussions about
critical studies of language, discourse and communication. I
especially hope this list will be useful as an international
'seminar' where Ph.D. students can meet each other as well as
scholars in this area.

ENLIST OTHERS?
If you want to involve Ph.D. students or colleagues actively engaged
in this field, please ask them to send a request to
critics at let.uva.nl by providing the information requested in the
general information message.

EXPERIMENTAL!
For the moment, the CRITICS list is still in an experimental stage,
and only a limited number (about 50) of people have been put on the
list. I have never monitored an e-mail list before, so please forgive
me any problems that may arise. Please feel free to send me any
suggestions that may improve the set-up, contents, orientation or
management of this list.

CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Please do not forget to send me future changes of e-mail address,
otherwise list messages will be sent automatically to your old address.

HOW TO SEND MESSAGES TO THE LIST:

For those list members who have not subscribed to other e-mail lists
before: You send a message to (all members of) the list by simply
sending a message to: critics at uva.nl. This address will always be in
the header of CRITICS List messages.

(Please do NOT confuse this address of the LIST with the --longer--
address of our local critics 'site': critics at let.uva.nl --which is an
address on the computer of the faculty of letters/arts).

If you want to REPLY to a message of the list, please decide whether
your message is only for the sender of the message (and in that case
you will usually be able to simply use R or Reply of your e-mail
system), or whether you want your reply to be read by all list
members. In the latter case you send a message to the whole list, as
described above.

If you want to know who is listed as a member at any moment
send the following message to majordomo at uva.nl:
who critics

CONVENTIONS
There are some general List conventions, and CRITICS may want to
develop its own, in order to make the list useful and efficient. I
suggest the following general and specific conventions, many of which
are obvious:

1. Focus on the specific topics and issues of the list
   - There are other lists for other topics.
2. Be brief. I suggest a maximum of about a 2-3 screen pages.
   - Users usually have limited time and finite mail-boxes!
3. Do not send longer documents to the whole list
   - Announce such documents on the list (e.g. with a summary)
   - Then send such documents personally to those who ask for it.
4. If you have never contributed to the list before, please introduce
   yourself with a few lines (even when you are a well-known scholar)
   the first time you make a contribution.
5. Put your full name, institutional address, phone/fax and/or e-mail
   address at the end of each message.
6. Please have respect for the rights and feelings of other list members
   -So, please avoid sexist, racist or otherwise abusive discourse
   -Even when debates get heated, please remain polite/friendly.

Further use of the CRITICS list will probably lead to other
self-imposed conventions.

MONITORING
This List is for/by all its users. Contents, topics and debates will
be decided by all contributors. Apart from admitting members to the
list, my monitoring role as a list convenor will be largely passive
and technical: subscribing members and troubleshooting. Besides
making my personal contributions to the list, I may of course
sometimes make suggestions to improve the adequacy or the effiency of
the discussion. Please do not hesitate to criticize me when and where
I make mistakes.

HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE:

Of course you may not have the time or the interest to receive
messages of the CRITICS list. If so, you can 'unsubscribe' in the way
indicated in the system's acceptation message, viz., by sending the
following message to majordomo at uva.nl (which is the system on which
this list runs):

unsubscribe critics your.name at your.computer

(where of course you substitute your e-mail address for the
expression your.name at your.computer).

If you have temporarily unsubscribed and want to subscribe again,
please send me a message, and I'll put you back on the list.

If you have problems unsubscribing, please let me know, and I'll
unsubscribe you. You can also send a message to my CRITICS assistant
Ms. Feng Bing (feng.bing at let.uva.nl) or of course to our special CRITICS
address here (critics at let.uva.nl) (NB. do NOT send your message for
us to the CRITICS list (critics at uva.nl) because then all list members
will obviously get it).

Senior scholars who locally coordinate critical research but who
would prefer to unsubscribe are suggested to ask a Ph.D. student or
assistant to monitor the CRITICS list. In that case, please send me
the name and the e-mail address of that person.

Another way to manage information overflow is to keep your CRITICS
messages separate from your personal e-mail messages by asking
whether you (and your co-workers, students and others interested)
could get a special local CRITICS user-name for messages from the
CRITICS List (or messages from other lists of course). These may then
easier be stored, read or printed at your convenience.

- --------------------

I sincerely hope this list will be a success. This will also depend on you!

Best wishes


Teun


Teun A. van Dijk
University of Amsterdam
CRITICS. Program of Discourse Studies
210 Spuistraat
1012 VT Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Phone: +31-20-525.3834 (office)
Phone: +31-20-6.27.37.47 (home --after 14 hrs)
FAX :  +31-20-639.1727
E-mail: teun at let.uva.nl (for personal messages)
or:  critics at let.uva.nl (for messages about CRITICS or this list).