International Systemic Functional Linguistics Association

Minutes of Annual General Meeting

16 July 1998, Cardiff

1. Chairperson's remarks

After the meeting convened at 16.30 with forty people in attendance, and more arriving later, Chair Bernie Mohan thanked the participants in the conference.

2. Election of new office bearer

Lynne Young moved that Nan Fries be reelected as Membership Secretary for another year. The motion passed unanimously. (Note: All office bearers whose terms are expiring should nominate a successor. Nominations should be seconded and include written consent of the nominee. They should be conveyed in writing to Carolyn Hartnett, chair of the Nominating Committee, (hartnett@compuserve.com).)

3. Minutes of the previous meeting

Jim Benson moved that the minutes be approved as posted. Approval was unanimous.

4. Business arising from the minutes

None

5. Treasurer's reports

Caroline Stainton sent a report of 1,729.68 Pounds Sterling on 31 December 1996 in the British account, with additions of 19.15, 25.25, and 27.20 in interest, totalling 1,801.28 on 30 June 1998.

Bernie Mohan read a statement from Fran Christie and Geoff Williams, reporting on the Australian account. Susan Feez has become Treasurer of the International account, taking over from Robert Veel and thus separating the roles of the Australian Association and the International Association treasurers. There is $8,000 in the International Account in Australia, assuming $3,000 is returned from the Toronto Congress. The 2000 ISFC in Melbourne will be given $3,000 seeding money, and a similar amount will be made available to the 1999 Singapore Committee if necessary.

Bill Greaves reported that the Toronto conference ran about $1000 short, to be accommodated from the British seed money. Bill Greaves and Paul Tench reported on the new policy of using 10% of the income to bursaries for scholarships of various sizes; there are problems in being unable to predict how much money will be available.

6. Upcoming conferences

ISFC 99: The 26th Systemic Functional Institute and Congress will meet in Singapore: the Institute July 22-24, the Congress July 26-30. Joe Foley, Dept. of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore, is scheduling it the week before AILA. The theme will be Linguistics in Education on Entering the 21st Century, but all topics will be considered. The main issue will be keeping costs down. Since the university will be in session, the venue will be either a hotel or the regional language centre: The institute will target Southeast Asian participants. Contact Kay O'Halloran (ellkch@leonis.nus.edu.sg) or J. Foley (ellfoley@nus.edu.sg).

July 5-16, 1999 in Toronto -- a two-week summer institute on Systemic Functional Linguistics for grad school credit or non-credit, with lectures and a lot of small group tutorial work. For information, contact Bill Greaves (greaves@delphi.glendon.yorku.ca).

12-20 July 1999 in Hyderabad, India, at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages -- International Seminar-cum-workshop on English Grammar III. Faculty of leading linguists from all over the world will deal with different aspects of the English language: phonology, morphology, lexicogrammar, stylistics, pedagogical linguistics, and computational linguistics. Write to Professor V Prakasam, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad 500007, India (prakasam@ciefl.ernet.in). (See call for journal articles below.) Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association will meet 28-30 September 1998 at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. For information check the website at http://www.adelaide.net.au/~jpolias/ASFLA/

English as a Conference Language, 15-17 January 1999, Wittenberg, announced by Eija Ventola, Martin-Luther University, Institut Anglistik/Amrikanishe, D-06099 Halle Sacele, Germany, (ventola@anglistik.uni-halle.de). The deadline for abstracts has been extended until the end of September.

ISFC 2000 in Melbourne: Graeme Baker invited participants 9-14 July 2000 for the theme, "Traversing Boundaries: SF Theory in New Contexts." Inquiries can be addressed to (isfc27@edfac/unimelb/edu/au).

ISFC 2001, tentatively the middle or last two weeks in July, on rhetoric and critical topics, at Carleton University campus in Canada's capital city, Ottawa, chaired by Lynne Young.

ISFC 2002 or 2003: V. Prakasam submitted a written invitation for 2002 or 2003 in Hyderabad, India. (See publication opportunities below.)

7. Announcement of opportunities and new publications by participants:

Language and Society, second edition, by William Downes. Cambridge Approaches to Linguistics. HB 0 521 45046 2, c. £35.00, PB 0 521 45663 0 PB c. £ 9.95

Evaluation in Text: authorial stance and the construction of discourse by Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson is to appear early 1999 through Oxford University Press. Also coming soon is Collins COBUILD Grammar Patterns 2: Nouns & Adjectives. Cobuild Ltd, Birmingham. 608 pp. HB 0 00 375068-X £40.00, PB 0 00 375067-1 £20.00.

Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics, Volume 8,. includes articles by Vande Kopple, Carretero, Romero and Soria, Morley, Ghadessy, and Gledhill. Other coming monographs are Categories of Experiential Grammar by Kristin Davidse, Metaphor, Mode, and Complexity: an Exploration of Co-Varying Patterns by Louise Ravelli, Text and Contextual Conditioning in Spoken English: A Genre-Based Approach by Guenter Plum, and Speaking Self and Other: Tenor and the Semiotics of Social Relations by Cate Poynton. Order from the Department of English Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.

Robin Fawcett noted that five books published by Cassell would be launched at the conference banquet, with conference discounts: Summary Justice: Judges Address Juries by Paul Robertshaw, 210 pp, £ 45:00, with a special conference price of £39.00. Pedagogy and the Shaping of Consciousness: Linguistic and Social Processes by Frances Christie, HB 0304 70228 5, £ 36.00 Lexicogrammar of Adjectives: A Functional Approach to Lexis by Gordon H. Tucker. HB 0304 33903 2, £33.00. Systemic Functional Grammar and Natural Language Processing by Elke Teich: HB 0 304 70168 8, £32.00 Learning through Language in Early Childhood by Clair Painter. HB 0 304 70056 8, £ 32.00

Robin, as a representative from Cassell, also asked for five or six topical anthologies, perhaps papers selected from several years of meetings and workshops. He is willing to serve as a clearinghouse for proposals for Cassell and other publishers, (fawcett@cf.ac.uk).

V Prakasam called for papers for Issues in English Grammar, volumes II to V, to be issued 12 July 1999. Chapters of 15 to 50 pages should be sent before 1 January 1999 to editors: Professor V Prakasam, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad 500007, India, or KV Tirumalesh. E-mail (prakasam@ ciefl.ernet.in). He would also like to celebrate ISFC's 30th anniversary by publishing 30 paperback books of 100 to 250 pages. Manuscripts should be sent at least one year in advance to Professor V Prakasam.. (See also his announcements of a workshop in 1999 and a later ISFC30 above.)

8. Any other business:

Thanks was expressed for all of the planners for this institute and congress. The institute had approximately 150 participants, the congress over 200, and the total number of participants in either was in the upper 200's. (They came from at least 35 different countries on six continents.)

Organizer Paul Tench asked for discussion of the schedule without lunch or tea breaks versus reducing the number of parallel sessions, which would mean tightening the reviewing. Sessions during lunch time were poorly attended. Joe Foley announced that in 1999 a Singapore hotel would require a fixed lunch and tea time break, but there would be no Wednesday break for excursions.

Communications are still a problem for locations without e-mail. Although printouts of the web site are mailed to them, they never got through to Nigeria. Also, because of the difficulty getting and sending books to Africa, participants are urged to contribute extra books or the libraries of retirees to be hand carried. Send materials to either Ayooluwa Banji, Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff CFI 3XB (banjita@cf.ac.uk) or Ernest S. Akerejola, Universite Gaston Berger de Saint Louis, BP 234 St Louis, Senegal, West Africa (akerejol@louis.univ-stl.sn)

Lynne Young and V Prakasam moved to adjourn the meeting, and agreement was unanimous.

Respectfully submitted, with thanks to all those who helped insure the accuracy of these minutes,

Carolyn Hartnett, Recording Secretary

Please send any corrections to (hartnett@compuserve.com).

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