A very warm welcome to the new IALSP blog posts! Please watch this space for updates from our Association’s executive and general membership.
As I write, IALSP is currently in the exciting space between conference past and conference to come. It is nearly a year since our last International Conference on Language and Social Psychology, where our friendly hosts were the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. It is also a year since I took up the presidency of this fine gathering of language and communication scholars from around the world, joining an illustrious line stretching all the way back to Peter Robinson and Howie Giles in the 1970s. Our latest ICLASP (the 14th) was the usual intellectual and social success, with ideas exchanged and friendships made or affirmed over three busy days in June. I was particularly impressed, once again, by the willingness of our large core membership to embrace and positively engage with fine work from different perspectives. It gave me renewed confidence in our future: the centripetal ontological forces holding us together as an association balance any centrifugal pressures that our ecumenical reaching out to other interests and traditions might bring. We are all about respect, dialogue and exchange – long may this continue.
Our current activities reflect this. Two recently-organised invited IALSP panels will augment upcoming events for sister organisations. I was delighted that Janice Krieger and Cindy Gallois and colleagues were able to put such a fine panel together for the next International Communication Association Conference on the 21st to the 25th of this month in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Here an IALSP Science Communication Task Force will present work on ‘Insights from the Science of Language on the Language of Science’. Equally impressive is the panel organised by Itesh Sachdev and colleagues for the Asian Association of Social Psychology’s next conference in Cebu, Philippines, 19-22 August, 2015. Itesh and colleagues will be showcasing a selection of recent and ongoing work in language and social psychology. We wish them bon voyage and every success in helping to get the IALSP message out there!
Planning is well under way for our next ICLASP, number 15. This will be a joint event with our colleagues from the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, to be held at their well-appointed Bangkok-central campus, next June. The IALSP Executive are in the process of finalising a line-up of stellar plenary speakers, and will be setting up activities and offers of support particularly for younger scholars. We can promise all attendees wonderful Thai and IALSP hospitality and a full quota of intellectual stimulation.
Details of the call for papers for ICLASP15 will follow soon, please look out for this in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology and as many other places as we can reach with the good news!
Tony Young
IALSP President.