Welcome to MUSL!
The Memorial University Sociolinguistics Laboratory (MUSL, pronounced “mussel”) was established in 2006 and is located in the Facilities Management building, FM-2006. Our goal is to be a resource for local sociolinguists, and eventually for researchers worldwide who are interested in language and society in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Latest news
CLA programme
Posted 14 May 2012
The program for presentations at CLA 2012 has been released. Presentation times for MUSL associates are as follows:
Jennifer Thorburn, "Considering Indigenous English in Canada: A variationist analysis of Nain Inuit English" [abstract]: Monday 28 May, 10:20 - 10:50 a.m.
Evan Hazenberg, "Positioning gender: intensifiers, downtoners, and identity" [abstract]: Monday 28 May, 9:00 - 9:30 a.m.
Both are presenting in the panel titled "Identity and Performance". When the schedule is finalized, these times will be confirmed on the website.
Call for papers: APLA 36 ALPA
Posted 8 May 2012
From 2-3 November 2012, St. Mary's University in Halifax is hosting the 36th Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association. The theme of the conference is Language and life: description, theory & beyond.
Proposals (in English or French) are welcomed for papers in all areas of linguistics, particularly in areas directly related to this year’s theme, such as language maintenance/preservation, community-based linguistic initiatives, biolinguistics, and all aspects of linguistic fieldwork. Students are especially encouraged to apply. Abstracts must be anonymous and no more than 300 words, excluding title and references, and should be sent as a .pdf to apla (dot) 36 (dot) alpa (at) gmail (dot) com. Papers presented at the conference will be published in conference proceedings.
For more information, please see the conference website.
The deadline for submission is August 20, 2012.
Call for papers: The Road Less Travelled
Posted 7 May 2012
Victoria College, University of Toronto, is hosting an international conference on heritage languages and heritage language acquisition, from October 26-27, 2012.
Heritage languages are the ancestral langauges of speakers immersed in a dominant language environment. This international interdisciplinary conference on heritage languages and heritage language acquisition consists of plenaries and short format presentations treating current research on the following topics: heritage language sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, acquisition, linguistic analysis, and education. Additional events include a session on students' language histories, and a conversation with Toronto writers Ricardo Sternberg and Martha Batiz, Poets in exile: The language I write In.
The organizing committee invites abstracts for poster presentations and pecha kucha (a fixed presentation format in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds). Abstracts must be anonymous, and a maximum of 1 page, submitted as an attachment to heritage (dot) conf (dot) 2012 (at) gmail (dot) com. Please include in the body of the email the following: (1) the author's name, contact, and affiliation, (2) the title of the presentation, and (3) the preferred format of the presentation.
The deadline for submission is May 15, 2012.
Call for papers: ADS Annual Meeting
Posted 7 May 2012
From Thursday, January 3, 2013, through Saturday, January 5, ADS will hold its next annual meeting at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, hosted as usual by the Linguistic Society of America.
Abstracts must be between 150 and 300 words. An LCD projector and a microphone will be available for each presentation; if any other equipment is required, please indicate this when submitting your abstract. Abstracts should be emailed to the Executive Secretary, Allan Metcalfe, at americandialect (at) mac (dot) edu.
The LSA is also accepting proposals for special sessions. See the website for more details.
The deadline for abstract submission is August 13, 2012.
Call for papers: 2013 LSA Annual Meeting
Posted 7 May 2012
The Linguistic Society of America's Annual Meeting is accepting proposals for organized sessions and paper and poster presentations at the 2013 Annual Meeting, which will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, from January 3-6, 2013.
Organized sessions may be on any linguistic topic that would be of interest to meeting attendees (e.g. characteristics of a particular language family; trends and advances in a particular subfield of linguistics; current debates on a particular research topic). They may also address topics of interest to particular groups of attendees (e.g. students, hopeful book authors, prospective grant-writers, policy advisors). They may have a theoretical or a pragmatic focus. Graduate students and junior faculty are particularly invited to submit proposals on professional development topics. Since the Modern Language Association will be meeting in Boston at the same time as the LSA, the Program Committee is especially eager to entertain proposals for sessions with some thematic or programmatic overlap with that organization.
The Program Committee requires that the subject matter for posters and presentations be linguistic, that the abstract not be submitted with malicious or scurrilous intent, and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with published specifications. In 2013, there will be no more than six (6) simultaneous sessions of regular papers in each time block. As in the past, there is no upper limit on the number of papers in any subarea.
See the conference website for details on submitting proposals.
The deadline for submission for organized sessions is May 15, 2012.
The deadline for submission for posters and presentations is July 31, 2012.
Call for papers: ADS Midwest Regional Meeting
Posted 25 April 2012
The American Dialect Society's Midwest Regional Meeting will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 8-11, 2012. The conference topic is Social Factors in Language Variation and Language Attitudes.
The ADS welcomes papers dealing with varieties of English and other languages spoken in the United States. Presentations may be based in traditional dialectology or in other areas of language variation and change, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, anthropological linguistics, folk linguistics, language and gender/sexuality, language attitudes and ideologies, pragmatics and politeness, linguistics in the schools, or critical discourse analysis.
Email submissions only. Abstract should be an attachment of no more than 250 words, excluding title and references. Include word count at the end of the abstract, and omit any identifying information (name, affiliation, etc.) in the attached file. Include contact information, affiliation, and abstract title in the body of your email. Send abstracts to Erica J. Benson: bensonej(AT)uwec(DOT)edu.
The deadline for submission is April 30, 2012.
CVC-IV preliminary schedule
Posted 23 April 2012
The preliminary schedule for papers at CVC-VI has been released. Tentative presentation times for MUSL associates are as follows:
Paul De Decker, "A Sociophonetic Analysis of Quoted Voices" [abstract]: Saturday 2 June, 4:30 - 5:00
Evan Hazenberg, "Unpacking identity: beyond the gender binary" [abstract]: Saturday 2 June, 4:00 - 4:30
Both are presenting in the panel titled "Identity and Performance". When the schedule is finalized, these times will be confirmed on the website.
George Story Lecture
Posted 23 April 2012
The Newfoundland Historical Society will be holding its annual George Story Lecture on Thursday, April 26th 2012, at 8:00 pm, at the Hampton Hall lecture theatre (Marine Institute, Ridge Road).
This month's lecturer will be Jeff Webb, and his talk is titled George M. Story and the Study of Newfoundland at Memorial. Refreshments will follow. Parking is free, and everyone is welcome to attend.
Sociolinguistics Research Group
Posted 4 April 2012
The MUSL Sociolinguistics Research Group (SRG) will meet Wednesday, April 18th from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. We will be discussing "Lavender lessons learned; or, what sexuality can teach us about phonetic variation" by Benjamin Munson (American Speech, 86.1: 14-31). The discussion will be led by Evan Hazenberg.
Call for papers: Regional Langauge Studies ... Newfoundland (RLS)
Posted 26 March 2012
Do you have a language paper or note that you would like to work up for local publication? Regional Language Studies ... Newfoundland encourages Memorial faculty and students to submit papers or notes on language topics that interest them, for possible publication. RLS welcomes papers and short notes that deal with any aspect of Newfoundland or Labrador English, among them language in historical perspective; regional or community features, both phonetic and grammatical; social differences in language use; lexical studies; and investigations of place names or family names. Papers that deal with other languages in the province (e.g. French, aboriginal languages) are also welcome.
RLS is published once a year by MUN’s English Language Research Centre (A3019). It is edited by Professor Emeritus William J. Kirwin of the English Department. The deadline for the next number is June 29, 2012. If you’re thinking of submitting, and would like further information, please contact ELRC manager Suzanne Power at elrc (at) mun (dot) ca.
While there is no set limit on length, papers in recent issues of RLS have not generally exceeded 3500 words (the equivalent of 10 double-spaced pages), excluding references and endnotes. The style of your paper should be fairly non-technical, aimed for a general-interest readership. Previous issues (1 – 22) are available online in MUN’s Digital Archive Collection
