LINGUIST List 4.156

Fri 05 Mar 1993

All: Policy Announcement: Conferences, New Books

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. The LINGUIST List, Policy Announcement: Conferences, New Books

Dear Subscribers,

1993 seems to be our year for initiating new policies. Most
likely it's a function of the growth of the list. We sincerely
want LINGUIST to remain as flexible and responsive to the
needs of subscribers as we can make it; but, with 3200
subscribers and about 50 messages a day to process, we're
having to ask for your cooperation on the following:

1) Please limit your conference announcements to
100 lines or less. We're getting such long announcements that
each must go out in a separate issue; and so we're sending out
as many conference postings as discussion. Also we're
getting complaints from people who pay for their e-mail
and prefer not to pay for info. on childcare arrangements,
train schedules, or the book exhibit location of a conference
they aren't attending. So please edit your announcements
before you send them in. From now on, we'll be returning
those that are longer than 100 lines.

2) Also we need to modify our book announcement policy, to
take into account unforeseen problems. We've received very
positive responses to our new policy of posting book
from commercial publishers. It seems to be a useful service to
our members. But we've received numerous book announcements
from authors, not publishers, and these have been in such
varied formats that it has been time-consuming to coordinate
them. So, we've decided to do the following:

With regard to format: In order to facilitate searches through
the database functions of the Listserv, and to ensure that the size
of book notices is kept to a minimum, we've decided on
standardized content and format, including a list of agreed-upon
keywords to use in searching. Also, to avoid deluging you with
junk mail, we've decided that a book will be announced once and
only once, in the month of its publication. And an up-to-date
backlist of each publisher's offerings will be maintained on
the Listserv. To maintain these policies, we need to deal with
publishers, who know the format and keywords, take responsibility for the
timing of the book announcement, and update the Listserv file
each time they announce a new book. So, in future, we will
accept notices of new books from commercial publishers only
from the publishers. If you wish your book to be publicized,
therefore, we are asking that in future you contact your publisher
and ask them to send us a book notice in the standard format.

This policy is aimed also at making publishers aware of the new
book notices on LINGUIST. We hope that in this way, over time,
LINGUIST will develop a database of all new linguistics books.

The following is an example of this format:

Reis, Carlos TOWARDS A SEMIOTICS OF IDEOLOGY
 1993. viii, 163 pp. Clothbound. ISBN 3-11-011829-7
 DM 118,00; approx. US $ 81,50 Mouton de Gruyter
 >internet:100064.2307compuserve.com Pragmatics, Text Ling
This monograph approaches the question of ideology from a new perspective.
Stressing the communicative potentialities of ideology and the persuasive
character of its textual practices, this book establishes links between
ideological semiosis and narrative.

Note that:
 1. The ENTIRE listing is a maximum of 8 lines long.
 2. The listing is divided into a 4-header and a 4-line description
 3. The header ends with two keywords, to allow for useful database
 searches.
 4. The listing contains information only. No advertising appears.

For your information, we will point out here that while we are happy
to accept individual book-notices from publishers who make
rare use of the LINGUIST book-notices--perhaps on the level of
once a year--we are asking all publishers who wish to make
more frequent announcements or who wish us to maintain a Listserv
file of their new books to make a voluntary contribution to
the LINGUIST development fund.

As always, we will continue to post announcements of non-commercial
publications--working papers, etc.--but we would appreciate your
making them conform to the limits and format above, as far as is
possible.

3) Now for a swerve away from the draconian: one way we might
make notices of new books more useful is to initiate book discussions.
And so we are thinking of inviting publishers who would like a new
book discussed on LINGUIST to send us a copy, just as they would to the
review editor of a journal. We will then send these books out
to persons who volunteer to initiate a discussion of some prominent
idea or ideas in the book. We are conceiving of these discussions,
not as reviews, but rather something more informal and interactive,
something new--as befits this new medium. For example, the discussion
leader might explain or summarize the idea(s) that interest him/her,
raise questions about them, and lead the discussion. At the request
of publishers, if we have more than one person requesting a book,
preference will be given to grad. students and independent scholars.
Does this sound reasonable and/or interesting to you? This idea has
not yet been put into practice, so we can modify (or abandon) it,
at subscribers' will.

And thank you very much for your cooperation on the conference
and book announcement policies outlined above.

-Anthony & Helen