November 6-9, 2008

Welcome to the 37th of the New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference. NWAV 37 will be held on November 6 - 9 2008 at the elegant Hotel ZaZa, which is located in the heart of the Museum District in Houston, Texas.  NWAV is being hosted by Rice University, and co-hosted by University of Texas-San Antonio.

Our theme will be "...Communities...", and we are drawing on number of different types of communities for this conference. First, we are working with several renowned sociologists at Rice University, and will include workshops, plenaries, and panels that have been jointly created by our planning committee and the sociologists. Second, we have engaged input and support from several nationally known civic leaders from Houston, and again, we have created plenaries and panels to reflect this engagement. Finally, we would like to encourage submissions that highlight not only academic and civic communities, but that highlight new ways of defining the communities sociolinguists use in their analysis of variation.

Plenary speakers for NWAV 37 include:

Nik Coupland
Carmen Fought
Howard Giles
Sonja Lanehart
Miriam Meyerhoff
Dennis Preston
Gillian Sankoff

We will be updating our website as necessary, and hope you will check back often. We are excited to be hosting NWAV 37, and excited to be given the opportunity to show you all that Houston -- fourth-largest city in the US -- has to offer.