Many people have written to us over the past week asking
for an explanation for the cancellation of the
conference. The ICLA has prepared a preliminary report and
and we invite you to examine this document (it follows this letter).
In the meantime, we have worked to secure copies of all the abstracts
accepted for the conference. We intend to honor the efforts of our
members and colleagues and integrate these presentations into our
conference in Xi'an, China, in 2010 [Webmaster note: After an email
survey of members, it was decided to leave the conference in China in
its originally scheduled year of 2011]. We hope to have more information
about this conference for you soon.
Recent events make it necessary to make some minor
adjustments in our Board and its terms. We will have a
proposal ready for your consideration shortly.
Of course the most important part of the ICLA is its
members and their valuable scholarly contributions to
Cognitive Linguistics. Your continued support of the ICLA
and its intellectual mission are most appreciated.
Laura Janda, ICLA President
March 20, 2009
Preliminary report on the cancellation of the 2009 ICLC
To ICLA members and all presenters and other intended participants of
ICLC 11:
The 2009 conference of our organization, ICLC 11, was cancelled by the
main conference organizer (Eve Sweetser) on March 12, 2009.
As a preliminary report of the views of the ICLA Governing Board on
this situation, we offer the following elements for reconstructing the
circumstances leading to the cancellation of the conference, based on
our notes and records (a definitive report will be delivered at the
next ICLA business meeting).
The ICLA Governing Board considers the cause of cancellation to be
lack of satisfactory organizational progress on the conference, at a
date too late to remedy the failures in essential conference
preparations.
The cancellation decision occurred under the following circumstances:
After repeated requests for information about crucial conference steps
over a period of more than a year, and verbal assurances by the
organizer that specific required steps had been or were about to be
carried out, the conference organizer was given a final request by
email and telephone on March 5, 2009 for evidence that specific
crucial organizational tasks had been performed.
A deadline of March 15 was set for producing this evidence, and the
ICLA Board intended to use the response to decide whether the
conference would meet the standards of the ICLA so that our
organization could continue to endorse the conference.
The response came from the organizer on March 12; it was, however, not
the requested evidence, but instead a cancellation of the
conference. The reason given was the unavailability of conference
rooms and the university's budget crisis.
Some participants have not only lost time in preparing for this
conference, but have also lost money by making travel and
accommodation arrangements based on conference paper acceptances. The
ICLA deeply grieves over the harm done to the participants by this
failure of conference organization. We feel that they have a right to
know the causes of their loss.
As problems with the conference surfaced over the past months, the
ICLA has done its best to help the organizer with information on
budgeting and our organization's conference organizing handbook with
timeline. The President and Board of the organization attempted to
remedy problems in various ways, but could not themselves force
changes to be made or actions to be taken.
In the end, communication among scholars runs on trust. For conference
organization, it is not usual for any organization to expect an
organizer to supply proof and written documentation of every step of a
conference's planning. We asked for explanations repeatedly over the
course of the last year and received repeated reassurances; we
believed that the organizer was addressing problematic issues. But
every conference has problematic issues, and the ICLA did not realize
that the problems were going to be insurmountable until the conference
organizer suddenly cancelled the conference. We were concerned about a
number of organizational aspects of the conference, especially lack of
information (e.g. on the website), and hence had asked for written
evidence of organizational progress; but instead we received notice of
cancellation based on the failure of the organizer to secure
conference rooms. We had no previous warning that the conference might
be cancelled.
Our aim is to make clear what happened with this conference. In the
opinion of the ICLA board, it is not accurate to state that the
cancellation was due primarily to circumstances and events entirely
beyond the organizer's control, rather it was due to a failure of
organization. We are aggrieved by the inconvenience and harm this has
caused to the prospective participants in the conference.
Sincerely,
ICLA Governing Board
March 20, 2009
To members and others concerned, March 14, 2009
Dear members of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association
and other friends of Cognitive Linguistics,
I have recently been informed that the preparations for the
International Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Berkeley in 2009
have reached an impasse and it is necessary to cancel the
conference. This cancellation has come about despite sustained and
laudable efforts to rescue the situation. However, responsibility for
organization of the conference rests with the local organizers, who
have made the decision to cancel.
We are at present working on an amended conference schedule over the
next three years. We hope to honor the efforts of the hundreds of
scholars who submitted abstracts for ICLC 2009 by integrating them
into a future conference. Our colleagues in China have graciously
offered us the possibility of moving the conference originally planned
for 2011 to 2010, and our colleagues Sally Rice and John Newman have
tentatively agreed to host the conference in Alberta, Canada in
2012. In addition, there are several alternatives for cognitive
linguistic conferences this year, among them
AFLiCo
May 27-29, SALC in Stockholm, June 10-12,
and the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics
conference, October 15-17 in Prague.
I realize that the
cancellation of the ICLC 2009 in Berkeley is terrible news for many of
us. The point in sending this message is to inform potential
participants as early as possible, before concrete travel plans have
been made. It is important that we all work together toward the
future of the ICLA. The current situation presents a challenge for
our organization, but I believe that our combined efforts will lead to
positive solutions. I expect to have more information for you
shortly. It will be necessary for us to make some important decisions
for the ICLA and I appreciate the support of our members at this time.
Laura Janda
President ICLA
3/14/09
To members, April 5, 2008
Dear members of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association,
I have three pieces of news to share with you:
Announcement of the dates for our next conference
(Near)Completion of our membership email list
Proposed Single-Transferable Vote System
Conference dates for ICLC 11
The dates for our next conference have now been finalized. ICLC 11
will be held at the University of California at Berkeley, U.S.A., July
28-August 3, 2009, in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of
America Institute. Eve Sweetser will head the ICLC organizing
committee. This information is also available at: ICLC Conferences. Of course we will all look
forward to being reunited with our colleagues in Berkeley.
[SEE REVISED INFORMATION ABOVE: 3/14/09 and 3/20/09]
ICLA membership email list
Thanks to the efforts of Ad Foolen, with assistance from other
members, we now have a functional email list of our membership, making
it possible for us to target messages specifically to our members, in
keeping with our Constitution
(Article 6).
Given the dynamic nature of email, no
list will ever be definitive, and this list is not entirely without
gaps, but is complete enough to serve as a good basis for the future
maintenance of such a list. All members can help out by remembering to
inform Ad Foolen (a.foolen AT let.ru.nl) of updates in their email
addresses. [also: let Ad know if you
see any names on Missing members' addresses
that you can provide emails for. --Webmaster]
Thanks again to everyone who contributed to this achievement.
Voting procedure
Suzanne Kemmer and David Tuggy have prepared a description of a voting
procedure that we propose using for future ICLA elections; the text is
available on the page
Single-Transferable-Vote System.
This voting procedure is efficient and fair and will help us to streamline
our democratic process during meetings. I would like to recommend that
members familiarize themselves with this process in advance of our
next conference.
Otherwise, I wish you all a lovely Spring (or Fall, for our antipodean
members). It always seems to me that Spring is the most challenging
semester, perhaps because of all the projects that have to be
finished, theses and dissertations defended, etc. by what is for many
of us the end of the academic year. Congratulations to all of us for
carrying on!
Best wishes,
Laura Janda
To members, Feb. 16, 2008
[The following letter to members was distributed via the email list of
the ICLA. If you are a member but are not on this list, please see
ICLA members without email address
on file.]
Dear ICLA Members,
I hope that this message finds you all well.
I am pleased to report to you that the Board has received and accepted
a proposal to hold the 2011 ICLC in Xi'an, China.
[Proposal was
attached to letter. If you wish to read it contact Ad Foolen at
a.foolen AT let.ru.nl]
This proposal has been formulated in response to a motion approved by
the Assembly of members at ICLC 2007 in Krakow. In bringing this
motion before the Assembly, the Board recommended that ICLC 2011 be
held in China provided that the two Chinese organizations, The China
Association of Cognitive Linguistics and China International Forum on
Cognitive Linguistics, could present a joint proposal for the
conference. These two organizations have risen to this challenge and
provided their proposal, which the Board has approved, thus giving
substance to the motion passed by the membership in July.
I wish to thank all of our members who have worked to help the ICLA
plan for the 2011 conference. Thanks are also due to everyone who
participated in the discussion concerning a conference in China on the
listserv and ICLC 2011 Blog.
Best wishes in 2008!
Laura Janda
To members, October 2007
On behalf of ICLA I would like to thank Elzbieta Tabakowska and her
able team in Krakow for hosting our conference in July 2007. The
hospitality of our Polish colleagues made it possible for over 500 of
us to gather and exchange ideas and plan for the future of the
organization. It would, of course, be impossible to summarize all
that took place at the conference; my purpose is merely to highlight
the news that is most relevant to ICLA.
First, there was a Jubilee celebration at the Krakow conference,
commemorating seminal events in Cognitive Linguistics in the period
1987-89. During this celebratory event, four linguists were honored
for their foundational roles in Cognitive Linguistics and in the ICLA:
René Dirven, George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, and Leonard
Talmy. Laudationen were delivered by: Martin Pütz (for René
Dirven), Klaus-Uwe Panther (for George Lakoff), Suzanne Kemmer (for
Ronald Langacker), and Eve Sweetser (for Leonard Talmy), followed by a
beautiful and mysterious call on a ram's horn, the traditional way of
sounding the "Jubilee" in ancient times.
Second, the ICLA Governing Board met in Krakow. Among the many
items on the agenda were the following:
request for affiliation from the China Cognitive Linguistics
Association
approved
two proposals to hold ICLC 12 (2011) in China, one for Shanghai
and one for Beijing
conditionally approved, pending resubmission as a
unified proposal
reports on budget, the journal Cognitive Linguistics, and progress
in planning ICLC 11 (Berkeley, CA, USA, July 28-August 3, 2009)
Elections were held at the business meeting of the ICLA Assembly, and
Maarten Lemmens, David Tuggy, and Arie Verhagen were voted in as our
Regular Board Members. (David was re-elected; he served as Regular
Board Member in 2005-2007). Ad Foolen is continuing as a member of the
Board and our Secretary-Treasurer. Our Ex-Officio Members are Ewa
Dabrowska (Editor of Cognitive Linguistics), Klaus-Uwe Panther (Past
President of ICLA), and Eve Sweetser (Organizer of the next ICLC in
Berkeley in 2009).
A question was raised about whether it is appropriate for ICLA to hold
a conference in China given the human rights record of the
country. Because we were unable to hold a discussion of this issue at
the ICLA Assembly meeting, a blog has been set up at
ICLC 2011 Blog , and
all members are encouraged to participate in the discussion there. We
are particularly eager to receive input on this issue before a final
decision on the 2011 conference is taken and will be closing the blog
for further discussion as of November 1, 2007, so please get your
comments in before that date.
Since the conference, the Board has been busy with a number of issues,
summarized briefly here:
Our Chinese colleagues have been asked to submit a single joint
proposal for the ICLC in 2011, and we are expecting to receive this
proposal in November 2007.
Meanwhile we have been working on an alternative proposal in
order to ensure that there will be an ICLC in 2011.
Given the fact that the organization and the conference have
grown, we are examining measures to improve the logistics of the
conference, communication with the ICLA membership, and procedures for
ICLA Assembly meetings. We are also considering various suggestions
for future conferences, such as ensuring a more varied selection of
plenary speakers.
We would like to put in place appropriate policy and funding for
Sign Language interpretation at our conferences.
I thank all of our members for their contributions to the success of
our conference and our organization. I invite all of you to share your
ideas concerning these or any other issues with me. I plan to post
quarterly updates on news from ICLA, and welcome all suggestions.