THE SOCIETY FOR MEDIEVAL LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

Purpose

The Society for Medieval Languages and Linguistics was founded in 1998 to provide scholars, students, and others who are interested in any facet of the linguistics of languages spoken and written in any part of the world during the period 500-1500 CE. SMLL was conceived of as an international organization, and our 182 members come from all continents but Antarctica, and aprroximately 29 countries.

Its biggest purpose is to serve as a forum for such people to share their insights, findings, and work generally with colleagues working in the same or similar fields, whether they identify themselves as medievalists or as historical linguists. In fact, as a “broad church” organization, drawing together people from various academic backgrounds, and having different interests in medieval linguistics, one of its main aims is to bring people in these two categories together, in the aim of providing a more complete picture of the languages and texts that comprise the medieval corpus, and understanding the social and cultural context in which these works were composed We are not tied to any one linguistic, literary, or historical theory, and welcome a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives under our rubric.

A secondary, but important aim of our society is to promote medieval linguistics papers at the annual Medieval Congress held in May at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the interest of keeping our disciplines visible. We are a regular sponsor of between one and four excellent and scholarly sessions every year, and hold our business meetings at the Congress also. At the same time, we seek to inform our members of other conferences, whether medieval or historical-linguistic, which welcome papers on matters of concern to them.

Thirdly, our society serves as a pool of experts in medieval linguistic fields, so that those who have questions about any aspect of our area of expertise will be able to have them answered by contacting the members listed under the pages devoted to different languages and different branches of linguistics. For our members, this sort of collegial contact will be greatly enhanced by the new SMLL-L Listserv allied to this site, which one can subscribe to by clicking here. It is hoped that in the future, we will be able to launch some sort of electronic journal as well.

Membership in the society is, at this point, still ABSOLUTELY FREE. Simply send an e-mail to the President of the Society at paul.johnston@wmich.edu indicating your intention to join and enclosing your name, your e-mail address, your area of expertise or interest, and your department and institution (if within the academic system). You will receive an official e-mail welcoming you to the Society and entitling you to all the benefits of membership.