In my recollection the inclusion of French presenters in Toronto worked reasonably well, given the association's executive attempts to subvert the bilingual French and English presentations they had initially agreed to. As a member of the Toronto organizing committee, I recall that we felt it important for AIR to grow internationally by recognizing the bilingual nature of their Canadian conference host country. With the help of people like David Mitchell, former editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication, we secured Canadian government funding for translation services and the call for papers was duly issued in French and English. There were a sufficent number of French-speaking scholars to assess French-language proposals. Cyber-philosopher Pierre Levy was secured to present one of the keynotes and all seemed well with the world. Then, a few months before the conference, the Toronto organizers were instructed by the AIR executive to cancel the French sessions and return the government funding offered for translation purposes. The Toronto conference chair refused and was deposed by the executive group, who installed a number of recently-involved locals more amenable to their wishes. Needless to say, those of us who had worked on the conference for 2 years were devastated, but managed to get the French sessions held anyway by arranging for set-up and support. The Francophone scholars who were aware of what had happened were upset, but thanked the deposed organizers. This heavy-handedness caused considerable bad feeling and set back AIR in this part of Canada, where several people have expressed a disinclination to be members until AIR becomes more than tokenly international. I air this dirty laundry now (pun intended) because of our Vancouver colleagues expressed desire to hold the conference, the discussions about AIR in Latin America, and language on the Internet. Now, I would never expect my native language of Latvian to be accommodated by AIR (nor the Croatian that someone mentioned), but when the conference is held in countries where major world languages such as Spanish or French are spoken, and when local organizers are willing to go the extra distance to secure funding, translation and organization, leaving it to the executive to just show up, why would the association continue to insist on its anglo-centrism? The executive who decided that English was to be the association's working language in all matters was almost all-American, and all English-speaking, except for one token member. Is that reflective of an association that purports to be international? ......................Alex Kuskis *********************** e-Scholars.ca Online Adjunct Professor, Communication Studies, Gonzaga U, Royal Roads U alex.kuskis@netscape.ca alex.kuskis@utoronto.ca ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeremy Hunsinger" <jhuns@vt.edu> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 8:14 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] AoIR in Latin-America
Just two points here. I think you'll recall that we did attempt multi-linguality in Toronto, but in the end it did not work well. there are systemic barriers to multi-lingualism in the organizational context currently that are immense, the cost of translation for instance, live translation in toronto was as i recall priced at around $25k. it is priced that high because the groups that are required by law to afford it can afford that kind of money. I think we had looked at it in Maastricht too, also very highly priced. When the conference costs $70k, and people already complain about costs and prices, adding another $25k is not really an option. That is just a practical concern. After Toronto, the Association decided that the operating languages of the association is english. of course, any executive committee in the future could change that, but it really was just a pragmatic decision. my argument has been, and will tend to be that AoIR has to serve the majority of its population, when that switches from an English commonality to a different commonality, then I think we should change our language.
The other thing to remember is that while in the world, those who write in english are a minority, in academia, in most disciplines in the world, the majority of publishing is in english (though this is changing pretty quickly and the major publishing houses want more of the Asian market).
so who is spinning off who, and what is derivative of what is a great question for the internet's and aoir's future, because while the hegemonic discourses are being transformed, academic cultures tend to move a bit slower...
On Mar 20, 2006, at 4:49 AM, geert lovink wrote:
No worries! People who speak in English are a minority in this world. The content in English on the Net is shrinking (relatively speaking) and so are the users for whom English is their first language. I guess it is time for Internet researchers to wake up to this new reality. Please read the basic statistics. We're spinning off those who speak English. It's not the other way round... Those who write in English are in the minority, big way. Let's not portray it otherwise.
Geert