[Air-l] Why Am I Only Communicating with Text?

[Nancy Baym]

>
>>At the risk of distracting from my points above, this is the American list
>>of Internet Researchers. How come all of our text is in US English? The USA
>  >is not the only country in America.

We have been through this many many times. Search the archives for 
"English as a Language for International Communication" if you want 
to read the previous discussion.

There is no language restriction or policy on Air-L.

Subscribers are free to post in any language they choose.

Three of our eight conferences have been (or will be) held in the 
United States. The other 5 were/will be located in Canada, England, 
the Netherlands, and Australia. At this point we do not anticipate 
that next year's conference will meet in the US.

We are all aware that the US is neither the only country in America 
nor the only country in which internet research is conducted. There 
is no need to point that out. Many people on this list are not from 
the US. Many people who come to the conferences are not from the US. 
Many members of the executive committee past and present are not from 
the US. I would argue that this association has done a great deal to 
facilitate the exchange of internet research across international 
boundaries since its inception.

Why is most text on this list in English? Because most people on this 
list recognize that for better or worse, English is the one language 
we all understand. However, if anyone wants to post in other 
languages, go for it. No one's going to stop the messages from going 
through.

Suely Fragoso started a parallel AoIR list meant to be trilingual 
(Portuguese and Spanish as well as English). I am not sure how that 
list is going (Suely? Others?).

So please, before going off on yet another rant/distraction about the 
Americanness of this Association make an itty bitty effort to get 
facts and history straight.

Can we pretty please talk about internet research for a while? That'd 
be really cool.

Nancy