Linguistics plays host to international conference, scholars

By Anna Wilde     11/20/08 6:00pm

To some, the thought of "copy" and "coffee" becoming homophones might be a terrifying thought. To linguists, it is one of many interesting observations presented at the 37th annual New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference, which was hosted by the Linguistics Department the weekend of Nov. 8.Linguists from around the globe gathered at NWAV to discuss topics pertinent to the field of sociolinguistics - which looks at the ways in which language variation carries social or cultural meaning. Although the conference, which was co-sponsored by the University of Texas at San Antonio, was held primarily at Hotel ZaZa in the Museum District, several events were held on the Rice campus. These included an eye-tracking workshop in the phonetics lab in the Department of Linguistics, two meetings in Herzstein Hall Amphitheater and a grad student party at Valhalla.

The theme for this year's conference was "Communities," which was chosen to highlight new ways of defining the communities sociolinguists use in their analysis of linguistic variation, according to the conference Web site.

Linguistics Department Chair Nancy Niedzielski, who coordinated this year's NWAV conference, emphasized the importance of collaboration between different fields.

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"What we do impacts more than just the linguistics community," Niedzielski said.

The conference hosted around 160 speakers who shared their latest research in 25-minute talks over the course of three days during the conference. Many of the talks did not present final conclusions of the researcher's work, but rather described conclusions made so far, further questions and future research. Turnout was high; for the second time in the conference's history there were over 300 registered participants, including grad students, professors and sociolinguists from Rice and several universities around the world.

This year's conference hosted speakers discussing all sorts of topics, from linguistics graduate student Cassandra Pace's new take on the variation of pronunciation of "-in'" versus "-ing" by speakers of American English, which was one of the first instances of variation analyzed by sociolinguists; to the recent trend of "dog-blogging," when dog owners write blogs in the voice of their dog. The speaker, Associate Professor of Linguistics Robin Queen from the University of Michigan, analyzed different linguistic variations used by these blog writers to convey the way their dogs would speak, and how these variations create a dialect for the "dog community."

The most crowded talk at NWAV was the one given by University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Professor William Labov, as he is considered by some to be the rockstar of sociolinguistics. Labov discussed misunderstandings in everyday life due to language change, such as the repeated confusion observed by him and his colleagues when discussing "coffee shops" versus "copy shops." The words "coffee" and "copy" are becoming homophones in their pronunciation by speakers from Northern cities in the United States.

Sociology Professor Steven Klineberg ran one of the conference's workshops on running community surveys to document economic and demographic changes. Noted leaders in the Houston community such as John Robinson from the Houston Area Urban League, Tracy Beavers and Ada Edwards from the City of Houston and several reverends from local churches participated in NWAV's first plenary, which discussed "Collaboration and Coordination Among Schools, Communities and the Academy."

Some sociolinguists are focusing on the issue of the poor literacy rate of minority children, especially blacks. At the conference, there were hopes that a new literacy program, in collaboration with local churches and members of the community, will boost literacy rates. Sonja Lanehart, a professor in the English, Classics and Philosophy department at UTSA, also participated in the discussion.

NWAV was also a sounding board for many graduate students' work.

"[The conference is] very grad student friendly," Niedzielski said.

Participating graduate students from other universities received housing accomodations during the conference and a discounted registration fee. Two awards are given at NWAV for graduate students: the Cambridge University Press/NWAV prize for Best Student Paper and the Charles Ferguson Prize for Best Student Poster. The winners, who receive a monetary prize of a few hundred dollars, are chosen by votes from the conference's participants.

Planning for this year's conference started two years ago when Niedzielski offered to host NWAV at Rice during the 2006 conference.

The conference almost came to Houston last year when Toronto was no longer able to be the host, but it was instead held at the University of Pennsylvania. From the beginning, fundraising was a focus, as the conference cost $65,000-70,000 to host. Then abstracts for potential speakers began flooding in - around 300 in all. The abstracts were ranked by a review board of prominent sociolinguists and the top-ranked topics were chosen to be presented at the conference. The NWAV37 committee, which was comprised of Rice linguistics professors and graduate students, ensured that the conference ran smoothly.

Sid Richardson senior Quinn Shadko said she was happy she found a niche among linguists outside of students at Rice.

"It was cool to feel part of a community, whereas at Rice it's just like, 'I take x, y or z class,'" she said.

Carlos Molina-Vital, a linguistics grad student and former Spanish instructor at the University of Georgia, said he was impressed by the new ideas expressed at NWAV.

"They said things I'd never thought about, even about Spanish," he said.

The first NWAV conference was held in 1969 at Georgetown University, shortly after the field of sociolinguistics was established. Approximately 50 people attended. Next year's NWAV will be hosted by the University of Ottawa.

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