ICA Newsletter, January-February 2007

International & Development Communication
Members of Division 5 (Intercultural and Development Communication) voted in the fall of 2006 in favor of a proposal that the Division be split into two, one for Intercultural Communication, and the other (provisional title) for International and Development Communication.

I was voted vice-chair of Division 5 starting in 2005, and - had the division continued as a single division - would have succeeded to the chair in 2007. At the business meeting of our new division in San Francisco this year (2007), I shall propose the following:

*I take on the chair of the new division for the period 2007-2009;

*A call for nominations for vice-chair should be issued as soon as the Association has a list of declared members of the new division, and that we then proceed to a vote as soon as possible;

*Likewise, we proceed to the choice of a division secretary as soon as possible;

*At our meeting, we should discuss a formal title for the new division (in the meantime I would welcome any thoughts that members or potential members may have on this matter). A new title must reflect our commitment as scholars of international and development communication, but members may want something that is more inclusive or that better reflects what we, as a community, actually research.

*At our meeting we should talk about what we want to do as a division, whether we want to keep to the same cycle of events as in the past, or do things differently.

Since the vote to split Division 5, my time for ICA has primarily been taken up with arrangements for the main conference in San Francisco, as well as with the pre-conference on Methodologies of Comparative Media Research in a Global Sphere: Paradigms - Critique � Methods which we are co-sponsoring with Philosophy, and Public Relations and which I believe is a commendable sequel to the pre-conference that we organized in New York 2005 on Articulating the Media/Globalization Nexus, in collaboration with Philosophy and with Sage Publications.

There are a great many things to do in the process of establishing ourselves as a new division, and I will be very appreciative, I know, for the assistance of the ever-helpful and ever-patient ICA executive in guiding me through the process. I am hopeful that as much of the work that can be done before we meet in San Francisco will be done. There may be some activities that can only be restored after discussion in San Francisco.

In the last year or so there appears to have been a decline in the regularity of communications within the division. The prospect of setting up a new division provides an excellent opportunity for repairing this. I also intend to look at the updating or re-establishment of a division web-site.

In the meantime, if you wish to contact me with your ideas, suggestions or questions please do not hesitate: my email address is oboydb@bgsu.edu.

Those of you who are familiar with San Francisco, especially with the zone of our conference hotel, may like to recommend a suitable restaurant for our division dinner.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those of you who have generously given of your time as paper reviewers for San Francisco, and who have volunteered their services as session chairs and respondents. Later this year I will be sure to provide a full listing of all of you, for inclusion in the newsletter. We had many more papers to consider this year, and I am confident of an excellent conference in May. I look forward to seeing many old friends and many new ones!

Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Chair
oboydb@bgsu.edu

Interpersonal Communication

Greetings to All Members of the Interpersonal Communication Division:

Thank you to each of you who submitted papers to our division. Your papers have been reviewed by our paper readers who include Susanne Allen, Jennifer Becker, Norah Dunbar, Rozell Duncan, Nichole Egbert, Bob Fennis, Thomas Friemel, Vija Giri, Jeffrey Hall, Steven Hoekstra, Susanne Jones, Hak-Soo Kim, Ascan Koerner, Carmen Lee, Ryan Lingweiler, Rachel Mails, Matthew Martin, Nathan Miczo, Roberta Mitchell, Nicholas Palomares, Malcolm Parks, Oscar Peters, Randall Rogan, Christina Sabee, Jennifer Samp, Sachiyo Shearman, Karyn Stapleton, Godfrey Steele, and Dennis Wignall. Thanks again to our reviewers for their dedication to the discipline and our division in particular.

By the time you read this, you should have been notified regarding the disposition of your papers. Congratulations go to our top four paper panel authors who include Meina Liu and Steven Wilson; Jessica Parker-Raley, Gary Beck, Catherine Surra, and Anita Vangelisti; Alesia Hanzal and Chris Segrin; and Katie Dunleavy and Melanie Booth-Butterfield.

It is also time once again to submit dissertations or theses for the interpersonal dissertation and thesis awards. Please submit 4 copies of a 25-page abstracted version of your thesis or dissertation along with 4 copies of your accompanying nomination by your thesis or dissertation advisor to:

Pamela J. Kalbfleisch, Ph.D.
Professor and Director
School of Communication

O�Kelly Hall, Room 202

221 Centennial Drive Stop 7169
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks, ND 58202-7169

Abstracted theses and dissertations and accompanying documentation should be received by March 15, 2007.

Respectfully Submitted by your Chair,

Beth A. Le Poire

bmolineu@clunet.edu

Language & Social Interaction

Dear LSI members,

The upcoming conference in San Francisco is coming together very well. We will have excellent program of panels and an outstanding pre-conference this year. We are also working on co-sponsorship of panels with the Political Communication Division.

This year LSI researchers contributed 64 papers to our division and 26 were accepted (41% acceptation rate). In addition, five panels were submitted and two were accepted. At least two reviewers evaluated each contribution based on quality and relevance.

I want to thank all the reviewers for their excellent work:

Galina Bolden, Rutgers University

Yanrong Chang, University of Texas-Pan American

Kathleen Haspel, Fairleigh Dickinson

Laura Lopez Calvo, University of Barcelona

Jenny Mandelbaum, Rutgers University

Jeffrey Robinson, Rutgeres University

Michelle Scollo, Rutgers University

Karyn Stapleton, University of Ulster

Iolanda Tortajada, University of Lleida

John Wilson, University of Ulster

Saskia Wittenborn, Chinese University of Hong Kong

The conference program has not yet been finalized so we are not able to announce the LSI portion of the program but be assured we have an exceptional line-up of papers programmed among nine sessions including the top paper session and the business meeting.

The top three papers in Language and Social Interaction are:

Cultural Ideals in Chinese Malaysians' Discourse of Dissatisfaction
Ee Lin Lee, Western Washington University

Bradford Hall, Utah State University

The Diffusion of Quotative Like: Grammaticalization, and Social Usefulness
Jessica Robles, University of San Francisco

Drawing on the Words of Others at Public Hearings: Zoning, Wal-Mart, and the Aquifer
Richard Buttny, Syracuse U

Jodi Cohen, Ithaca College

On behalf of our division, congratulations to all of them!

This year's preconference, organized by Michelle Scollo from Rutgers University, will be "Directions in Mediated Communication, New Technologies, and Language and Social Interaction Research." Thanks to Michelle for putting this excellent event together.

If you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact either of us.

See you in San Francisco!

Best,

Francois Cooren, Chair

f.cooren@umontreal.ca

Mark Aakhus, Vice-Chair
aakhus@scils.rutgers.edu

Popular Communication

The journal Popular Communication is changing hands. We welcome Cornel Sandvoss, Jonathan Gray, and Lee Harrington as co-editors who will serve the journal for the next five years. A heartfelt thanks to Sharon Mazzarella and Norma Pecora, the inaugural editors of the journal, for their five years of service.

If you read the ICA President�s column in December, you may be wondering why the Popular Communication Division has lost members in recent years. There are several possible reasons for this. It may be that the rise of new divisions has drawn former members into more specialized divisions that popular communication wholeheartedly welcomes (such as the ERIC, GLBT, and Game Studies interest groups). It could be that as the division with the highest number of ICA members who have membership in another division, ours was the one to lose out when budget cuts came around in individual departments. Or it could be that we�ve just lost our pizzazz (if you think that then clearly you didn�t attend the Pop Comm/ERIC wine & cheese reception in Dresden!).

I want to remind you that there are several advantages to renewing your Pop Comm membership when it comes around again. First, we are now host to the journal Popular Communication, meaning you receive a copy of this journal as a member of this division. Second, as a student member, you qualify for travel grants and for a top student paper cash award, and as a faculty member, you qualify for a top faculty paper cash award. You also receive our division�s newsletter, published twice a year, which makes you aware of new research, syllabi, calls for papers, and networking opportunities.

Even if you�re not a member, please come to the joint reception we�ll be hosting in San Francisco along with ERIC, GLBT, and FSD. It going to be fun - and we won�t ask to see your membership card at the entrance, we promise!

Lynn Schofield Clark, Chair

Lynn.Clark@du.edu