The Editor's Department: Language and practicality

Those who know me, and I include here any regular readers of this column that there might be, know that there is little about the journal that I have not had something to say about over the past five years: our style sheet, our contents, our policies, and changes in our format, to name just a few, are all among the items that have been fuel for my word processor. Indeed, it is hard for me to let any aspect of Language go uncommented upon, especially when there is a shift in some part of our operations or some new feature to report on. As it happens, this issue has something new in it that, to my mind, deserves some explanation.

Language has accepted advertisements for many years; the first ad, as best I can determine, appeared in Language 45.2, the June 1969 issue, and was placed by Cambridge University Press. That was an appropriate beginning, as indeed, over the nearly forty years of advertising in the journal, virtually all of the ads have come from publishers of linguistics books and journals. Such ads, of course, serve many purposes, but among them is keeping the journal’s readership informed about developments that are themselves of a nonscientific nature but that nonetheless are salient and relevant to professional linguists and their scientific interests. In that sense, even though ads also generate a small amount of income, they primarily play a very practical role, having an informational function for readers. In that spirit, but also to fulfill another practical function, in this issue we are beginning to run ads for linguistics jobs around the country. This decision was spurred by the change in the publication mode for the LSA Bulletin and an unintended consequence occasioned by that change.

First, though, a bit of history about the Bulletin is in order. As discussed in a previous column (Language 81.3, September 2005), following a decision by the LSA’s Executive Committee, the Bulletin is now published only in electronic form, after a long and venerable tradition of appearing in print. The Bulletin had been published since December of 1926, at the end of Language’s second year, when No. 1 came out, entitled Survey of linguistic studies: Opportunities for advanced work in the United States and authored by Roland Kent and Edgar Sturtevant. The next several Bulletins were devoted to announcements or records of Linguistic Institutes, with No. 2, Record of the Linguistic Institute: First session July 9 to August 17, 1928, appearing in September of 1928 and marking the first Linguistic Institute, held at Yale University with Edgar Sturtevant as the director. By No. 2, the Bulletin was officially designated as a ‘Supplement to Language, Journal of the Linguistic Society of America’, and in that way was a publication of the LSA on a par with the series of Language dissertations, designated as a supplement from 1929 on, starting with No. 5 of that series, and Language monographs, designated as a supplement from 1930 on, starting with No. 6 of that series (the dissertation series and the monograph series were two distinct series, though the first four monographs are not available to me to clarify the relation between the two at the outset). The Bulletin was published twice a year (March and September) from March 1929 (No. 3) to 1931 (No. 8) and then was on hiatus for four years (1932–35), reemerging in 1936 (No. 9) and appearing once yearly thereafter until 1969 (No. 42). Beginning in 1970, the Bulletin came out four times a year. The June 2005 Bulletin (No. 188) was the last one to appear in print format, and since October 2005, as noted above, the Bulletin has been available exclusively through the LSA website ( www.lsadc.org ).

So what does this change in the delivery of the Bulletin have to do with advertising in Language, and what practical aspect is involved? One function that the Bulletin had served was as a venue for the publication of advertisements for jobs for linguists, officially labeled as ‘job opportunities’. This practice began with Bulletin No. 101 (October 1983). In...