DOCUMENT RESUME ED 332 504 FL 018 885 AUTHOR Davison, Alice, Ed.; Eckert, Penelope, Ed. TITLE Women in the Linguistics Profession: The Cornell Lectures. Conference on Women in Linguistics (Ithaca, New York, June 1989). INSTITUTION Linguirtic Society of America, Washington, D.C. SPONS AGENCY National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. PUB DATE 90 CONTRACT NSF-88-00534 NOTE 268p.; Produced by the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics. PUB TYPE Collected Works - General (020) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC11 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Administrator Attitudes; *Cultural Isolation; Deans; Doctoral Dissertations; *Employment Patterns; English Departments; *Females; Graduate Study; Higher Education; :,;tellectual Disciplines; *Linguistics; Mentors; Scnolarship; *Sex Bias; F.exual Harassment; Tenure; Trend Analysis; *Women Fulty; Work Environment ABSTRACT Papers on women in linguistics are presented in five groups. An introductory section contains: "Feminist Linguistics:A Whirlwind Tour"; "Women in Linguistics: The Legacy of Institutionalization"; "Reflections on Women in Linguistics";and "The Structure of the Field and Its Consequences forWomen." Papers on trends and data include: "The Status of Women in Linguistics"; "The Representation of Women in Linguistics, 1989"; and"Women in Linguistics: Recent Trends." A section on problems and theirsources includes: "How Dick and Jane Got Tenure: Women and UniversityCulture 1989"; "Success and Failure: Expectations andAttributions"; "Personal and Professional Networks"; "Sexual Harassmentand the University Community"; and "Two Cultures of Communication."Essays on finding and giving support include: "Gender Valuesand Success in Academia"; "First Generation Mentors"; and "He Was HerMentor, She Was His Muse: Women as Mentors, New Pioneers."A section addressing stages in a woman's career contains: "The DissertationYear"; "A Dean's Perspective on Women in Academe"; "FromGraduate School to Tenure"; "Living on the Margin: Pros and Cons ofBeing Linguists in an English Department"; and "Independent and Isolated Scholars: Report on a Group Discussion." (MSE) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best thatcan be made * * from the original document. * *******:*************************************************************** The Cornell Lectures Women in the Linguistics Profession Editors Alice Davison Penelope Eckert Published by The Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics of the Linguistic Society of America 1325 18th Street NW Suite 211 Washington DC 20036-6501 1990 Copyright for each paper in this vo' ume rests with the author. - r Contents Page Acknowledgments vi Foreword vii Alice Davison Part 1 Introduction Feminist Linguistics: A Whirlwind Tour 2 Some Useful Bibliography 12 Sally McConnell-Ginet Women and Linguistics: The Legacy of Institutionalization 23 Paula A. Treichler Reflections on Women in Linguistics 33 Amy Sheldon The Structure of the Field and its 43 Consequences for Women Frederick J. Newmeyer Part 2 Women in Linguistics: the Numbers The Status of Women in Linguistics 55 Patti Jo Price The Representation of Women in Linguistics, 1989 72 Alice Davison, Walter Cichocki, David Silva Women in Linguistics: Recent Trends 89 Dorothy Disterheft iv Part 3 Problems and their Sources How Dick and Jane Got Tenure: Womenand 112 University Culture1989 Paula A. Treichler Success and Failure: Expectations and 129 Attributions Virginia Valian Personal and Professional Networks 142 Penelope Eckert Sexual Harassment 155 and the University Community Molly Hite Two Cultures of Communicltion 164 Louanna Furbee Part 4 Finding and Giving Support Gender Values and Success in Academia 183 Craige Roberts First Generation Mentors 196 Margaret Speas He Was Her Mentor, She Was His Muse: Women as Mentors, New Pioneers 208 Amy Sheldon Part 5 Places in a Woman'sCareer The Dissertation Year 224 Margarita Sufier A Dean's Perspectiveon Women in Academe 231 Francine Frank From Graduate Schoolto Tenure 239 Carlota S. Smith Living on the Marg;n: Prosand Cons 245 of Being Linguists in an English Department Edwin Battistella andArnie Lobeck Independent and IsolatedScholars: 251 Report on a Group Discussion Susan Kesner Bland Epilogue 254 Conference Participants vi Acknowledgments This volume originated in a conference on women in linguistics, organized by Alice Davison at Cornell University in June of 1989, along with co-organizers SallyMcConnell-Ginet, Amy Sheldon and Paula Treichler. Thanks are due to a wide range of people and organizations for their generous contributions to the conference, and to the production of this volume. The conference was sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics and the Women's Studies Program at Cornell, the Commitee on the Status of Women of the Linguistic Society of America, and the National Science Foundation's Visiting Professorships for Women program. The conference was funded by the National Science Aundation as part of a visiting professorship which Alice Davison held for the calendar year 1989 in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University (NSF grant 88-00534). The cost of publication of this volume was contributed by the LSA Committee on the Status of Women. The Institute for Research on Learning in Palo Alto, California, generously provided computer facilities ane support for the creation of camera-ready copy for t,1,' publication.We especially thank Tina Marquez ;tad Steve Oliphant at IRL for software and hardixare support, and Ivan Sag for help with the copy-editing. Both editors owe a particular debt of gratitude to Sally McConell-Ginet for her generous and warm support of this project from beginning to end. vii A Foreword to the Conferen, with Some Afterthoughts Alice Davison University of lowa In the introductory session of the conference, I gave some background to the conference: why it had come about and what it was intended to do. Here I give a somewhat condensed version of what I said then, overlaid with some afterthoughts about things I now see more clearly in retrospect. Now that the conference has actually occurred, I have had a chance to think over the papers which were given and the effect they had, on me and perhaps on the other people who heard them. I hope a conference like this was inevitable: a conference with invited speakers who could help to articulate a broad and general agenda for women in linguistics. Yet it was a long time coming about, even with the very interesting and useful panels organized at the annual LSA meetings by the Committee on the Status of Women. A conference like this is unprecedented, in that it was not constituted along the traditional lines of a linguistics conference, with short papers on analyses of data within some accepted body of assumptions about language. In proposing the conference, I had in mind both a positive model and a negative model. Francine Frank organized a panel at the 1982 LSA meeting in San Diego, at which six currently active linguists presented biographies of six prominent women in linguistics of the 50s and 60s. They were active professionallywhentheproportionof women in linguistics was much smaller than it is now, yet the quite varied patterns of their professional lives were not unlike what women face now, and it was the specific details of their careers which made an impact on the audience in 1982. For example, it came as quite a surpriseto me that someone as well-known and well-regarded as Mary Haas did not have a permanent job until very late in her career, and had survived for a long time on funds from research grants. The often startling realities and less than perfect circumstances surrounding the careers of women who had achieved distinction in their fields allows women in these times to find some connections and models whereprofessional models are still scarce, and isolation or feelings ofbeing outside the norm are still common. This was the positive model which I wanted to extend to the presentday. Paula Treichler's narrative of Dick and Jane gives a contemporary example of the shape of a woman's career. In the early days of the LSA Committee on theStatus of Women, there were open meetings at which problems facing women in linguistics were meant to be discussed. These discussions often took on the air of grievance sessions, of recitalsof terrible things which had happened to various women. The grievances wereindeed real jobs were lost, tenure was not granted, very painful compromises were made between professional goals and family responsibilities. The participants were left feeling very upset and angry, but with noclear idea of what the basic problems were, or where to start in their solution. Since then, much thinking has been done on various fronts, within the women's movement, inverious academic disciplines where very interesting work is done on gender, languageand academia, and in scientific fields, where the low representation of women continues to be a matter of very deep concern.(This is one of the motivations behind the NSF Visiting Professorshipsfor Women program, for which I wrote the proposal.) I wanted to address some of the basic issues aboutthe pressures causing attritionof women in linguistics, in a format which would include or at least not exclude a range of differentviews of women in linguistic withouz, imposing a particular one on the wholeconference. ix One possibleexplanationfor why somesortof independent or grass-roots association of women did not