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2007 Meeting Reports

ICLA Governing Board Meeting; Business Meeting of the ICLA Assembly; and Conference Closing Ceremonies, ICLC 10, Kraków, Poland, July 2007

1. Report on the ICLA Governing Board Meeting/CL Editorial Board Meeting

Date/time: Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 7:00 pm
Location: Kraków, ul. Krupnicza 35 (conference venue), Room 115 A supper before the meeting is generously provided by the conference organization at a nearby restaurant.
Present:
--Governing Board members: Klaus-Uwe Panther (President), Ad Foolen (Secretary/Treasurer), David Tuggy (Regular Member), Hubert Cuyckens (Regular Member), Jeong-Hwa Lee (Regular Member), Suzanne Kemmer (most recent Past President), Ewa Dabrowska (ex officio member, Editor of Cognitive Linguistics), Elzbieta Tabakowska (ex-officio member, Representative of the ICLC 10 Organizing Committee)
--By invitation of the President: Anke Beck (CL Publisher), Sherman Wilcox (for Item 7 on Sign Language Interpreting), Ron Langacker (advisory for various items), Qilong Cheng (vice-president of CCLA for Items 3 and 4), Thomas Fuyin Li (for Item 4).

Items of Business

  1. Call to order by the President Klaus-Uwe Panther.

  2. Minutes from ICLC 9, Seoul. The President requests approval of the minutes of the Board Meeting and the Business Meeting of ICLC 9, Seoul, from 2005. They were re-approved. [They had already been approved by email on August 15, 2006. They are posted at Meeting Reports 2005.]
  3. Request for affiliation: China Cognitive Linguistics Association (CCLA), submitted by Qilong Cheng and others. The Board approves (with some minor changes) the proposed Constitution; thus the new affiliate is approved. The application documents can be checked with the Secretary.

  4. Proposals for ICLC in 2011. Two proposals are presented: One from the CCLA, proposing to hold the 2011 ICLC in Shanghai, and one by Thomas Li of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA), now Beihang University. Dr. Li confirms his proposal (now substantially revised with added detail) submitted at the Seoul ICLA Board Meeting in 2005 to hold an ICLC in Beijing. The Board finds both proposals attractive and decides that the ICLC in 2011 will take place in China (subject to a vote by the Assembly). After answering questions of the Board, Qilong Cheng and Thomas Li leave the meeting. Subsequent discussion among the board members does not lead to a clear decision in favor of one of the two proposals. The Board further considers it important that the two groups from China who made a proposal, work together. Therefore, it is decided to ask the two groups to come up with a joint proposal before the end of the year. [Update: This led to the joint proposal by CCLA and Li's group, submitted after the conference, to hold the 12th ICLC, 2011 in Xi'an, China, July 11-17, 2011.] [Update 2009: Due to the cancellation of the Berkeley conference, the Xi'an conference has been renumbered to ICLC 11 (2011).]

  5. Consideration criterion for ICLC proposals: The Board decides that when considering future ICLC proposals, whether or not a proposal is supported by a local affiliate organization will be taken into account. Such local affiliate support will be considered a positive factor in the application.

  6. Report on ICLC 10 by Elzbieta Tabakowska, Chair of the ICLC 10 Organizing Committee. The number of accepted papers is 444 (298 in general session, 246 in theme sessions), and there are 36 accepted posters. The number of paying participants is 502. Financially, the conference is healthy. ICLA has paid $300 for Signed Language interpretation and in addition the flight ticket of Len Talmy. The conference organization defrayed all other expenses except a few during-conference expenses (listed in connection with the Treasurer's Report below).

    The President thanks the Organizers for their wonderfully well-run conference. The Board thanks them also for providing the restaurant supper.

  7. Report on ICLC 11 (2009) in Berkeley. Eve Sweetser reports that she will include colleagues from Stanford, Davis, and Santa Cruz in the organizing committee. She announces that advance money from ICLA will be necessary to set up a website. The conference will take place from 17 to 23 of July, 2009. [Update: In March 2009, the conference was cancelled by the organizer.]

  8. Sign Language Interpreting Fund. Two documents are presented, one by Sherman Wilcox, "Interpreter Services for ICLC: Report and Proposal", and one by Suzanne Kemmer, "Sign Language Interpreting at ICLA Conferences". Both documents plead for setting up a committee that advises the Board and future conference organizers on sign language interpretation. The document by Suzanne Kemmer contains the recommendation that interpreting expenses be built into the budget of future conferences and that the ICLA support sign language interpreting services (as practiced since 2001). The Board approves the proposals and decides that the President nominates a committee (ICLA Accessibility Committee / Committee on Interpreting).

  9. President's report. The President reports that in the past two years two new affiliates have been approved: UK-CLA (United Kingdom) and SALC (Sweden). [Update: In 2009, SALC announced that the Swedish Association for Language and Cognition will change its name into Scandinavian Association for Language and Cognition. This is considered a name change rather than a new organization].

  10. Secretary/Treasurer's report. Ad Foolen presents his financial report on the organization from 2005-2007.

    Balance of funds as of June 2005: €16.154,27
    In
    Membership fees 2005 €2.753 (301x8 + 69x5)
    Membership fees 2006 €2.921 (312x8 + 85x5)
    =====
    Total income €5.674

    Out
    ICLA contribution to ICLC9 €4.446,49
    5000 ICLA flyers €528,30
    (design concept and printing)
    Bank pass €20,90
    Costs for account €0,71
    =======
    Total expenses €4.996,50

    In minus Out €677,50
    Beginning balance June 2005 €16.154,27
    Net increase €677,50
    Ending balance June 2007 €16.831,77

    Of this €15.100 is in a special account with 2,7% interest.

    [Note: The following special costs for ICLC10 paid by ICLA are not included in the above overview, since they were accounted for after the conference: Flowers for organization helpers, €500 prize for best presentation, $300 for sign language interpretation, flight ticket Len Talmy.

    The Kraków conference organization has covered the following extra expenses not in its original budget: the board supper, registration fees for the Signed Language interpreting team, and reimbursement for plane ticket for the head interpreter. These expenses were taken on by the conference organizer once it became clear that all necessary expenses were covered and the conference was in the black.]

  11. Cognitive Linguistics (journal). Ewa Dabrowska thanks the outgoing editor Adele Goldberg for her work and for the smooth transition. Ewa announces that she plans to appoint Associate Editors. [Implemented in 2009: Antonio Barcelona, Benjamin Bergen, Stefan Gries, Laura Janda.] The number of submissions in the past year was 71. The period of notification is under 3 months. Some special issues are in preparation.

  12. Publisher's Report. Anke Beck, Editor in Chief of Mouton, reports the following:
    • The journal is an A-journal in the European Science Foundation (ESF) ranking.
    • Cognitive Linguistics Bibliography. CogBib will be web-based in the future. Authors can add new titles via a special website on a platform at Mouton.
    • Mouton will introduce a platform that gives ICLA members electronic access to the journal and to CogBib. [Update: has been implemented in 2009].

  13. Definitions of ICLA Governing Board Roles and Non-Board ICLA Roles - Suzanne Kemmer, following up on the board's decision in Seoul in 2005 (see Board Meeting 2005, Regular business Item 4) that the roles and duties of the ICLA Governing Board Members be specified more explicitly, and also the role of the American Treasurer and the Webmaster, presents an updated document (with feedback from other Board Members as well as Ron Langacker and Arie Verhagen) outlining the Board roles and also some non-Board roles for others serving the ICLA. The Board approves the document. It is agreed that the Board Roles will be posted to the website as organizational information under Policies and Procedures. [Update: posted 2008 as Definitions and Responsibilities of the ICLA Governing Board Roles and Non-Board Roles.]

  14. John Benjamins special offer for ICLA members: Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy. Benjamins has requested that ICLA put a link on its website to the above-mentioned bibliography, with a special offer for ICLA members. The Board approves the request. [Update: Link to this offer posted on the ICLA website membership pages here and here.]

  15. Contest for best presentation by a young scholar. 34 young scholars have shown interest to participate in the contest. A committee (Ad Foolen, Marjolijn Verspoor, Maarten Lemmens, Jeong-Hwa Lee, Hubert Cuyckens) will visit the presentations and posters, 2 evaluators per presentation. [Update: See announcement of prizewinners in the report on the Business Meeting of the ICLA Assembly below.]

  16. Conference organization guidelines booklet. Suzanne Kemmer, following up on the Board's decision to adopt her suggestion made at Seoul (see 2005 Board meeting report, Regular business item 7), presents the latest incarnation of the Guidelines and Expectations for ICLC Organization and its Aftermath. This document was originally begun after the Logroño conference based on the many improvements suggested by Board members at that conference. Since then, experience from the Seoul conference has been incorporated by Suzanne; also, the document now includes a draft timeline for major organizational tasks. These documents will be given to the organizer of ICLC 11 after the conference, and posted on the ICLA website so that the organization's objectives and expectations of the conference organization can be publicly available to prospective organizers, current organizers, and participants. [Update: The Guidelines and attached timeline was sent to Eve Sweetser, conference organizer of ICLC 11, in December 2007 and posted on the ICLA website at ICLC Guidelines in May 2008.]
  17. Election of ICLA President and Governing Board (2007-2009): suggestions for nominees. Board members suggest that the present President be nominated at the Business Meeting for another term in this role; the President indicates willingness to serve. As candidates for regular members are mentioned: Arie Verhagen, David Tuggy, Yo Matsumoto, Andrea Tyler, Elzbieta Tabakowska, and Barbara Dancygier. These names will be proposed at the Business Meeting.

  18. Adjournment - The President adjourned the meeting at 12.00 a.m.

2. Report on the Business Meeting of the ICLA General Assembly, ICLC 10

Date/time: Tuesday July 19, 2007, 5.45-6.45 pm
Location: Auditorium Maximum, Univ. of Kraków
Attendance: ca. 100

Items of Business

  1. Call to order by the President, Klaus-Uwe Panther
  2. President's report.
    - Klaus Panther reports that ICLC 10 is attended by a total of 502 participants.

    - In 2006, UK-CLA and SALC were accepted as new affiliate organizations, and CCLA in 2007. The number of affiliate organizations is now 13.

    - Ewa Dabrowska is the new editor of Cognitive Linguistics. ICLA welcomes her.

    - The ICLA website continues to be based at Rice University, with Suzanne Kemmer as Webmaster, together with Martin Hilpert, who is serving as Web Editor.

    The President invites members to send in books for review or write a review of a book for the ICLA website. See the instructions for prospective reviewers and for those who would like to make their books available for review on the ICLA book review page.

    [Update: Martin Hilpert continues as Web Editor after 2007 although he has moved on to a faculty position at U. Freiburg. Members are urged to continue to send in book reviews to the above site. Haowen Jiang (haowen AT rice.edu) became Assistant Webmaster in Fall 2009 and will post the reviews to the site once they have been selected and edited by Martin. As of March 2011 Haowen continues in this role.]

    - At the closing meeting of ICLC 10 on Friday, there will be a celebration to honor the 'Founding Fathers' of Cognitive Linguistics (George Lakoff, Ron Langacker, Len Talmy, and René Dirven) at 5 p.m., followed by a closing reception sponsored by Mouton at 6 p.m., at which the prizes for best student conference papers will be awarded.

    - At the last conference in Seoul, the Board accepted a conference proposal by Eve Sweetser and so the ICLC 11 (2009) will take place in Berkeley CA, USA. Also at that time, The Board agreed that the ICLC 12 (2011) would be held in China, although the final proposal had not been selected. [Update: The 2009 conference was cancelled and the 2011 conference is now numbered as ICLC 11. ICLC 11 2011 will be held July 11-17, 2011.]

    The President explains why the Board proposes to have the 2011 conference in China: There is a strong interest in Cognitive Linguistics in China and an ICLC will have a positive influence on this interest. China may grow to be an important area of membership if we encourage and foster such interest and an ICLC in China would do exactly this.

    From the floor, Anatol Stefanowitsch initiates a discussion on China as a possible venue for ICLA. He disapproves of the ICLC's going to China because of the restrictions on internet access implemented by the Chinese government, because of the suppression of dissidents in that country, and most importantly because of violations of human rights. He proposes that the ICLA boycott China as its conference venue.

    President Klaus Panther responds that academic boycotts are detrimental to scholarly exchange, and unfairly harm members of the organization in the boycotted country. He gives the example of East Germany, and the fact that despite strong disagreement with its political system and complaints of serious human rights violations, western linguists went to conferences there, in part to allow the eastern Germans to participate and not be locked out of academic exchange.

    After various further points for and against a boycott, Ad Foolen points out that if there is to be enough time in the meeting to hold elections, the discussion cannot continue much longer. There is unfortunately not enough time available to fully discuss the issue, because buses will be leaving for a museum event immediately following the business meeting and their departure cannot be postponed. [Update: the language preceding in this paragraph was stylistically simplified 3/11/2012.] Marjolijn Verspoor initiates a vote regarding the question of whether the issue of going to China should be discussed further at the meeting and it is immediately seconded. The majority of those present vote for postponing the discussion.

    [Update: After the conference, the new President Laura Janda sets up a blog so that the desired discussion among members could take place outside the limited time of the assembly meeting. This discussion, on the issue of whether the ICLA should hold a conference in China or should boycott China as an ICLA conference venue, takesplace in Autumn 2007 on the blog ICLA China discussion. The majority of the discussants support the Board's proposal to hold the 2011 meeting in China.]

  3. Secretary/Treasurer's report. Ad Foolen reports that the number of paying members has increased from 358 (2005) to 420 (2007). There are 318 regular members and 102 student members. The top 10 by country are given below for 2007 and 2005.

    2007 2005
    1. USA 72 1. Japan 72
    2. Japan 71 2. USA 71
    3. Germany 41 3. Germany 31
    4. U.K. 23 4. Spain 19
    5. Netherlands 21 5. U.K. 18
    6. Spain 19 6. Korea 16
    7. Norway 12 7. Netherlands 16
    8. Belgium 11 8. France 10
    9. Sweden 11 9. Belgium 10
    10. France 10 10. Australia 9

    For the financial report, see item 10 of the Board Meeting [above].

  4. Maarten Lemmens gives a presentation on the activities of the French Association of Cognitive Linguistics (AFLiCo) and on its new on-line peer-reviewed journal CogniTextes

  5. Election of President. Members of the Board nominate Klaus-Uwe Panther. From the floor Laura Janda is nominated. Result: Panther 41, Janda 58, Abstention 1. Laura Janda is thus elected as the new President.

    The Secretary/Treasurer was elected in 2005 for four years, so his function is not open for election. Other roles are ex officio, except the following.

  6. Election of Regular Members. As per the Constitution, 3 Board positions in this role are required to be filled.

  7. Voting procedure. Since the role of Regular Member typically has many candidates, the Secretary-Treasurer adopts a voting procedure that will shorten the voting process. David Tuggy explains this procedure: the Single Transferable Vote system.

    In this procedure each voter lists the candidates for a given position in his/her order of preference on the ballot. The least preferred candidates for a position on the first ballot count are eliminated and the votes they garnered are given to other ranked candidates on the same ballot who are still in the running, until a majority candidate for the position is reached. [Update: The Single Transferable Vote system, often used in organizations run on a parliamentary basis, was afterwards explained in detail to members on the ICLA site at Single-Transferable-Vote System].

  8. Nominations for Regular Members. Nominated as candidates for Regular Member by the members of the Board: Barbara Dancygier, Andrea Tyler, Elzbieta Tabakowska, Arie Verhagen, David Tuggy, Yo Matsumoto, and Maarten Lemmens. Nominated from the floor: Anatol Stefanowitsch and Sherman Wilcox.

  9. Election for Regular Members. ICLA Members present are asked to rank as many nominees from the above list as they wish, and the paper ballots are collected. In a first round of counting, David Tuggy is elected (24 first votes). In the second round of counting, Arie Verhagen is elected (24), and in the third round, Maarten Lemmens is elected (43).

  10. Summary of Results. The Governing Board for 2007-2009 will thus consist of:
    Laura Janda, President
    Ad Foolen, Secretary/Treasurer (continuing constitutionally from prior election)
    Maarten Lemmens, Regular Member
    David Tuggy, Regular Member (re-elected)
    Arie Verhagen, Regular Member
    Klaus-Uwe Panther, most recent Past President (ex officio)
    Ewa Dabrowska, Cognitive Linguistics journal Editor (ex officio)
    [Update: corrected 3/11/2012 from original version in which Dabrowska was mistakenly listed as invited attendee rather than ex officio Board member.] Eve Sweetser, representative of the ICLC 11 Organizing Committee (ex officio)

    [Update: After the cancellation of ICLC 11 (2009), Eve Sweetser is replaced on the Governing Board by Thomas Li and Dingfang Shu, organizers of the ICLC for 2011, now renumbered to ICLC 11 (2011).]

    The new 2007-2009 Governing Board will begin its term immediately after the ICLC 10 conferences is over. Their term will continue until the end of the ICLC 11 conference in 2009 at U.C. Berkeley.

    [Update: The cancellation of the 2009 conference means there is no 2009 Board meeting or Business Meeting and thus no normally-scheduled election. The Board Members agree to serve the ICLA until the election at the next Business Meeting in Xi'an in 2011. ICLC 11 2011 will be held July 11-17, 2011].

  11. Adjournment. The President adjourns the meeting at 6.45pm.

3. Closing Ceremony and Reception

On Friday, 20 July, at 5:00 p.m., a plenary meeting takes place in the conference building gallery, in which the "Founding Fathers" of Cognitive Linguistics are honored. Laudatory speeches ("Laudationen") were given by Martin Pütz on René Dirven; Suzanne Kemmer on Ronald Langacker; Klaus-Uwe Panther on George Lakoff; and Eve Sweetser on Leonard Talmy. The speech ceremonies were closed off by the eerie sound of a ram's horn, in ancient Semitic tradition used for celebration of a Jubilee, meaning an anniversary of an event. (The word jubilee comes from Hebrew yobhel 'jubilee, 50th anniversary of emancipation from slavery celebrated every 50th year', earlier 'a trumpet, ram's horn' lit. 'ram', in a fine example of a historical metonymy chain.)

6.30-7.30 p.m.: The above ceremonies lead into the Closing Reception of the ICLA, sponsored by Mouton de Gruyter, held in the same locale. The prizes are announced for best student papers of the 10th ICLC. First prize: A joint paper by Mateusz-Milan Stanojevic & Renata Geld. The prize from the ICLA coffers is €500, plus a free book from Mouton. Second and Third prizes go to Arne Zeschel and Justyna Robinson, respectively. Each receives a free book from Mouton.

The Organizer and her organizing committee are heartily thanked for all their hard work in putting on a successful conference and for extending Kraków's hospitality to the participants of the ICLC. Bouquets of flowers are presented to the Organizer and her assistants.

Draft submitted by Ad Foolen, Fall 2009
Approved by the ICLC Governing Board 20 Dec 2009. [Update 3/11/2012: at the ICLC Governing Board meeting in Xi'an in 2011, some small corrections to these reports were requested. One slight inaccuracy and one stylistic update are flagged above with "[Update...]" and the 3/11/2012 date; the remaining suggestions were to change verb tenses to harmonize tense throughout the document, and these are incorporated silently above.]

Updated 11 March 2012

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