Linguistic Ethnography SIG Business Meeting 13 September 2002
Held during the Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, in Cardiff.

Present: David Barton, Richard Barwell, Jan Blommaert, Angela Creese, Constant Leung, Miriam Meyerhoff, Nigel Musk, Ben Rampton, Celia Roberts, Karin Tusting

1.	Minutes of Business Meeting, April 2002 – agreed without amendments.

2.	LEF Seminar in April 2003.  

Location: Offers have been received from both Edge Hill (Jo Arthur) and Southampton (Jill Bourne) to host the seminar.  Unfortunately the Southampton offer only came through recently so given the time constraints on us it was decided to thank Jill Bourne for her offer and to continue to follow up the Edge Hill offer.

Dates: Dates offered were the 7-15 April (before Easter) and 22-25 April (after Easter).  It was decided that the earlier dates would be preferable, so we will ask Jo Arthur whether the 7th and 8th are still available.  The issue of whether it is easier for people to meet at weekends or during the week was raised and the meeting had a mixed response so for now we will aim to have this meeting during the week since the last one was at a weekend.

Topics: In order to maintain the seminars as an ongoing conversation about Linguistic Ethnography as a whole, the meeting decided to continue the model of having a mixture of themes by offering half of the seminar to the local organiser to follow up topics of her choosing.  

Translation, representation and interpretation, as a topic that came up during the Gregynog meeting, was discussed as a possibility for the other half.

It was agreed to circulate an invitation to the email list to contribute to the formulation of a topic or topics for the April meeting, asking what elements of translation, representation and interpretation people would be interested in discussing, to develop the programme.

3.	LEF Colloquium at BAAL AM, September 2003

One possible topic arising from the Gregynog meeting was the relationship between Applied Linguistics and Linguistic Anthropology in the interface with Education, and the different emphases between US and UK approaches.  This topic was also felt to be appropriate to the theme of the Leeds AM (“Applied Linguistics at the Interface”).

It was agreed to check the deadline for colloquium submissions [KT: 31 March 2003] and to discuss the choice of topic and programme over the email list.

4.	Formal establishment of the LEF SIG.

The establishment of the SIG has been formally approved by BAAL.  The meeting agreed that for the moment the steering group will take on informal roles within the SIG as follows:

Ben Rampton: Acting convenor / secretary
Angela Creese: Acting meetings secretary
Karin Tusting: Acting web co-ordinator
David Barton / Janet Maybin (to be discussed): Acting treasurer

The steering group will take responsibility for designing systems over the next year to fulfil the SIG requirements according to the BAAL constitution, and to elect people to SIG responsibilities at the business meeting at the BAAL AM 2003.

5.	Mechanisms for taking the discussion forward

For the moment, these issues will be disussed using the ling-ethnog email list where appropriate.  KT to work on developing a website which will offer facilities for synchronous and asynchronous online communication both between the steering group and in the SIG as a whole.