Minutes of ISFLA Annual General
Meeting
Date:
Venue:
Attendance: Chris Taylor, Frances Christie, Carol Taylor, Eija Ventola, Kay O’Halloran, Inger Lassen, David Banks, Geoff Thompson, Christian Matthiessen, Kazu Teruya, Alex Peng, Xueyan Yang, Jim Martin, Sue Hood, Carlos Gouveia, Mick O’Donnell, Mike Cummings, Erich Steiner, Bernard Mohan, Gillian Moss, Elizabeth Thompson, Robin Fawcett, M. A. K. Halliday, Cecilia Colombi, Victoria Magariños.
Meeting
declared open (Cecilia Colombi, ISFLA Chair) –
1.
Apologies: L. Barbara, W. Bowcher, B. Derewianka, A.
Hansen, Guowen Huang, M. Schleppegrell, B. Smith, G. Williams.
2.
Minutes
of ISFLA Annual General Meeting – 33rd
ISFC –
Accepted after some clarification of Mick
O’Donnell’s proposal for reform of the Constitution.
Both Mick O’Donnell’s proposal and the minutes
were unanimously accepted.
3.
Report
on ISFC Congresses
35 ISFC Sydney, Australia (2008)
Christian Matthiessen announced that the pre-conference
school would be held during the week of 14th-19th
of July
at the University of New South Wales and the conference would take
place at
Macquarie University from 21st to the 26th of
July. Prior
to the conference, Kay O’Halloran is hosting the 4th
International
Conference on Multimodality in Singapore.
36 ISFC Beijing, China (2009) The
pre-conference courses are to be held
at University. No date has been set yet.
The conference is to be hosted jointly by Beijing
Normal University and Tsinghua
University. The theme will be ‘Challenges to
SFL: Theory and Applications’ and the official languages will be
English and
Chinese. The organizing committee will soon start working on the
details.
37 ISFC Vancouver, Canada (2010)
Geoff Williams had reported to Cecilia Colombi
that the pre-conference institutes will take place in the week
commencing 12th
July 2010. The congress itself will start on Sunday evening 18th
July and end on Friday 23rd July.
38 ISFC Lisbon, Portugal (2011) Lisbon’s
offer to hold the conference in 2011
was supported at the last European Conference. Carlos Gouveia reported
that the
facilities are suitable. Cecilia Colombi put the motion that the 2011
conference be held in Lisbon to the vote. The motion was carried.
Frances Christie asked where to hold the conference in Australia in 2011. It was suggested to hold it at the University of Adelaide, where Peter White is. This is to be discussed with Peter White.
Eija
Ventola reminded the participants that the European meeting for
2008 is to be held in Helsinki between the 5th and the 7th
of June. She requested that the news be spread.
4.
The
Halliday Centre for Intelligent
Applications of Language Studies (HCLS) – upcoming institutes and
conference
M A K Halliday reported on the upcoming First HCLS Conference to take place at the City University of Hong Kong. The topic of the conference will be ‘Becoming a World Language: The Role of English, Chinese and Spanish’. The topic is to be explored from a linguistic point of view. The aim is to examine what the process of becoming global means. The conference is open to contributions regarding the three languages mentioned and others. The conference is to be held between the 5th and the 7th December in Hong Kong. Prior to the conference a pre-conference school is to be held dealing with Systemic concepts and theory.
5.
Other future
conferences
Erich Steiner reported on the Saarbrucken European Conference starting on Monday 23rd July 2007. Seventy participants have signed up to date, with 50 to 55 papers to be presented. An invitation to participate was extended to all present. All preparations are going according to plan.
Gillian Moss announced the upcoming ASFAL 3rd Regional Conference to be held in Puebla, Mexico 26th-30th November. All regions were invited to take part. Papers may be presented in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The conference website is available for consultation and the call for papers is still open. Workshops are to be held prior to the Conference.
Christian Matthiessen announced the 5th International Conference on English Grammar to take place in India early in January 2008. The Conference will have a significant SFL component and will be strongly geared to educational issues. He commented that the last year has seen plenty of SFL discussion in India. He invited all to engage in discussion with Indian scholars.
(Xueyan Yang?) announced the Discourse Analysis Conference to be held in China in October 2008.
6.
Constitution
regional members electorate
process
Proposer:
Mick O’Donnell
Proposal:
That the word ‘treasurer’ be changed to read ‘treasurers’ and
that the word ‘network’ be changed to read ‘website’.
The
motion was carried.
7.
Award
given to Mick O’Donnell for setting up
and maintaining of the website
Following a suggestion made by Frances Christie in 2006, Cecilia Colombi on behalf of the ISFLA awarded Mick O’Donnell a token of recognition for all the work he has put into the setting up of a mailing list and ISFLA home on the Internet. This website is a very valuable resource for teachers, researchers, and students worldwide. Mick O’Donnell expressed his thanks.
8.
Treasurers’
reports
Robin Fawcett presented the financial report of the 3 associations. Money is held in national currencies, but for practical reasons he expressed the amounts in American dollars.
ISFLA
accounts:
|
Australia |
14,872 |
|
Europe |
8,670 |
|
Americas |
1,909 |
|
Total
|
25,451 |
He
reported that on three occasions, international conferences have run
at a loss and either the local organisers or ISFLA had to put money in.
A lot
of the money in the general account came from the Australian
association, and
from the fees of the Cardiff pre-conference. Yet he reminded the
meeting that funds should be
carefully kept as losses can be easily incurred.
He further
reported that money was used to support two conferences in the past,
like the
Latin American one. This led to the formation of the Latin American
SFLA.
Financial support was provided too for a lecturer to go to Nigeria,
with
positive results. He suggested that the participants think of other
regions of
the world where conferences may usefully be set up. He also suggested
that some
amount of money should be kept aside to sustain grant and scholarship
programmes.
9.
Region
representatives’ report:
Cecilia
Colombi moved that regional reports be submitted in writing,
directed to either herself or Mick O’Donnell, so that they could be
posted on
the website. The motion was carried.
10.
Issues
concerning upcoming international and regional congresses in Europe
Jim
Martin said he wished to move two motions:
-
that ISFLA
recommend that competing meetings not be held at the same time as the
ISFLA
conference
-
that no
support be offered to regional associations meetings if they collide
with an
international meeting.
After a full and lively discussion the first motion was voted upon but did not carry on and Jim Martin withdrew the second motion.
Frances Christie motioned that Jim Martin’s recommendation be discussed by associations and be raised again in 2008.
Frances
Christie formally put forth the motion: that the proposal that
regional conferences not be held when an international conference is to
take
place in the same region be referred to regions, and that the
associations
report back next year. Twenty-one votes were cast in favour. There were
three
abstentions.
11. Suggestion to organise a free
online SFL course for beginners
Bernard
Mohan suggested it would be good to organise a free Internet
course of SFL for beginners. This would provide many people with an
entry to
the theory, particularly in places like Indonesia, where SFL is
becoming
stronger in education. A motion was made that the executive committee
designate
an ad-hoc committee to funnel resources and organise one such course.
Cecilia
Colombi seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously carried.
Bernard
Mohan offered to co-ordinate the committee himself.
The
meeting was adjourned by Cecilia Colombi at 6.20 pm.
These
minutes are submitted by Victoria Magariños (July 2007)
- Report on the Chinese Functional
Linguistics Conference