Speaking of Mary Gray Porter: An interview with a former editor of "Among the New Words"

Speaking of Mary Gray Porter: An interview with a former editor of "Among the New Words" Brenda K. Lester Since 1941, American Speech, a linguistics quarterly currently published by the American Dialect Society, has included an ongoing installment of neologisms, with contextual examples and extensive documentation, called "Among the New Words" (ANW) . The first editor of the column was Dwight L. Bolinger, who moved what was then called "The Living Language" from I. Omar Colodny's Words, a Los Angeles magazine in which the column had been published since 1937, to American Speech in 1941 and renamed it "Among the New Words." I. Willis Russell, professor of English at the University of Alabama , succeeded Bolinger in 1944 and held the position for a remarkable forty-two years. In 1984, he passed the editorship to his longtime assistant editor, Mary Gray Porter, though he continued to guide the column until his death on February 12, 1985. Porter's tribute to Russell in the Winter 1985 installment described him as "a gentle man, a considerate friend and mentor, and a meticulous editor and scholar." Porter remained as interim editor until John Algeo published his first installment, in the Fall 1987 issue of American Speech, but her substantial contribution to this enduring register of new words and their sources has gone largely uncelebrated.1 'One can find brief histories of ANW in Algeo andAlgeo (1991, 71-81), Algeo (1991, 1-2), and Glowka and others (2000, 100-101). Porter is usually mentioned in these accounts, but only in passing. Algeo andAlgeo (1991) includes Dictionaries:Journal oftheDictionary Soaety ofNorth America 22 (2001) 172Brenda K. Lester From 1944 to 1957, Russell was the sole editor of "Among the New Words," compiling citations sent in from a dedicated group of individuals , some of whom later made up the Committee on New Words. Woodrow W. Boyett's name appears as assistant editor in installments from December 1957 to May 1959, except that of February 1959. Norman R. McMillan assisted Russell with the October 1965 and May 1966 installments. Russell resumed editing the column alone until, one day in 1971, he offered thejob of assistant editor to Porter, a German professor at the University ofAlabama. Porter had long been fascinated by the study of neologisms and had regularly delivered valuable citations to Russell. Evidently, he thought that she could contribute even more to the column, and so began a collaboration that lasted fourteen years and produced thirty-three installments of "Among the New Words." Porter retired in 1992 and is now professor emérita of the University of Alabama. She is an impressive woman, who at seventy-six possesses a razor-sharp wit, a mischievous sense of humor, and a warm, gracious manner. She lives with her dog Missy and her cat Spot in a quiet neighborhood not far from the university campus. These days her attention has shifted from matters of academe to the responsibilities of domestic life, such as house repairs and the formidable task of organizing the very extensive printed material she has collected over the years. When I visited her last fall, however, Dr. Porter took a break from her daily routine to talk about her life, her experience working with I. Willis Russell, and "Among the New Words." We began by discussing her early history. Porter: I was born right here in Tuscaloosa, in the parking lot across the street from the university [laughs]. Actually I lived in Florence, Alabama, for the first five years, but my mother's family was here in Tuscaloosa, and that's how I happened to be born in Tuscaloosa. We moved back to Tuscaloosa when I was about five or six. brief accounts of Russell's editorship by James B. McMillan and Anne Boyd Russell, the former of which fails to mention Porter at all. Though the SpringSummer 1971 issue lists Russell as the column's editor, "with the assistance of Mary Gray Porter," the by-line lists Porter as Russell's co-editor from the next issue until that of Winter 1985; she appears as co-editor with Algeo in his first installment, Fall 1987. Porter's work on ANW deserves greater attention, though, for as...