SHEL-1

[Robert Stockwell]

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Conference Announcement

Studies in the History of the English Language: SHEL-1

        Place:  UCLA
        Date:   May 28-30, 2000
                First Session: Friday Evening Plenary Lecture
                Second and Third Sessions: Saturday Morning and Afternoon
                        Conference Banquet and Second Plenary: Saturday Evening
                Fourth Session: Sunday Morning

Purpose and Objectives:
        In Europe the biennial conferences known as ICEHL (International
Conference on English Historical Linguistics) have served the field of
English Language Studies extremely well, giving the field both focus and
recognition that it almost certainly would not have achieved otherwise.
These conferences have taken place at major English Language research
centers over the past twenty years, each conference organized and managed
by the faculty of the conference site: Durham, Odense, Sheffield,
Amsterdam, Cambridge, Helsinki, Valencia, Edinburgh, Poznan, Manchester.
        In North America, despite the presence of many major scholars in
the field, Historical English Linguistics -- the History of the English
Language told in the light of contemporary linguistic sophistication -- has
not emerged with the same kind of recognizable personality. Many scholars
who do this kind of work are to a significant extent servants also of other
fields such as general linguistics, English medieval studies, American
dialectology, applied linguistics and teacher training.
        By organizing SHEL, what we hope to do is begin to provide the same
kind of focus for English Historical Linguistics in North America as the
focus achieved in Europe by the ICEHL series, in North America for Germanic
Linguistics by GLAC (Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference), for American
Dialectology by the American Dialect Society, for Social Dialectology by
NWAVE, and of course for General Linguistics by the LSA. We are not in
competition with any of these series or organizations; we believe, however,
that a weekend meeting dedicated entirely to linguistic issues in the
History of English will be an energizing and useful academic experience. We
begin modestly: no organization, just a conference. Neither the timing nor
the choice of UCLA as the first venue are accidental; in early June of the
year 2000 Robert Stockwell will reach a major anniversary and has agreed to
provide the first plenary talk in lieu of a 'retirement' lecture. Anne
Curzan is offering to organize and host the next meeting in Seattle.
        We invite preliminary expressions of interest, including working
titles of the paper you would like to present, to be sent to:
                        Professor Donka Minkova
                        Department of English, UCLA
                        405 Hilgard Avenue
                        Los Angeles, CA 90095
Expressions of interest and working titles can also be sent to the
following e-mail addresses:

                        Minkova at humnet.ucla.edu         or
                        Stockwel at humnet.ucla.edu        or
                        ACurzan at u.washington.edu

Our preliminary plan is to allow all participants one-half hour for
presentation, with an additional ten minutes of discussion followed by a
break before the next paper. One page abstracts in three copies,
unidentified except by the cover sheet, should be sent to the organizers by
January 15, 2000. These will be taken as submissions for anonymous review.

While we wish to separate, very clearly, the research aspects, which we
consider our primary focus, and the pedagogical aspects, we recognize that
most of the likely participants are engaged professionally in the teaching
of courses on the history of English. Anne Curzan has therefore proposed to
organize a workshop on some aspect of the pedagogical concerns of the
participants. Prospective participants should contact
ACurzan at u.washington.edu.