<i>American Speech</i> : The Next 100 Years

This issue of American Speech represents the beginning of a new era. With a modern design and a pair of new editors, the journal heads into the next 100 years with fresh excitement and with a vision for the future that builds on a storied past. We thought that the best way into that new future would be to introduce ourselves to you individually, then provide our reflections on the past and our dreams for the future.I've been a member of the American Speech and American Dialect Society (ADS) community since 2008. That January, I presented with my then-M.A. supervisor, Sali Tagliamonte, at the annual meeting held in Chicago. The topic was general extenders (like and stuff and and things like that) in Toronto English (a topic that I later returned to with Alex D'Arcy in our 2019 American Speech paper on Canadian English homogeneity). That same year, American Speech published my first journal article, again with Sali but on the hot topic of the day: the language of instant messaging. For most of the process, I was an undergraduate student, and Sali handled the communication with the journal and plans for revision, but even with the initial revise-and-resubmit response from Michael Adams, I remember feeling like the process was valuable and our paper was going to be all the better for the reviews we received and Michael's editorial direction. Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better introduction into academic publishing. Over the years, I've regularly attended and presented at ADS meetings (eventually bringing my own undergrad and grad students with me) and have published what I think is some of my most important work in the pages of American Speech. In one case, I really got the sense that Tom Purnell went to bat for my coauthor and me in the face of a particularly critical review. This moment of editorial agency always stuck with me and I appreciate it even more today, not just because he eventually published our piece, but because he modelled what it means to be a good editor for me. When Michael Adams first reached out to me in summer 2024 about the possibility of taking on the editor role, I was surprised to say the least. But as I floated the idea around with my family, colleagues, and mentors, I realized that I have always enjoyed the peer review process; recently I had the pleasure of coediting a volume of The New Cambridge History of the English Language with Natalie Schilling and Raymond Hickey, two highly experienced academic editors who I learned a great deal from. I soon realized this was a position that I was glad to take on and quite excited about. In my interview with the search committee, I asked about the possibility of coeditorship. I'm not sure if that's where the idea initially came from, but when I heard from them that both Jennifer and I were selected, I was thrilled to know I would have another like-minded and experienced colleague with me for (at least) the next five years.I joined ADS in 2009, in advance of presenting at the conference in Baltimore in January 2010. I had already been contemplating a connection with the organization, as I had recently connected with longtime member and former president of the organization Dennis Preston for my dissertation research on perceptual dialectology in Louisville, Kentucky. That presentation turned into an article with American Speech, where I had the good fortune to work with Michael Adams, whose careful and considerate attention made the article that much better. At the conference the following year, I met Bob Bayley, then-editor of the annual Publication of the American Dialect Society (PADS), who had read my dissertation and encouraged me to consider a submission to PADS for a revision of it in book form. As a freshly minted Ph.D., I was flattered but felt like an imposter. I sat on it. Two years later, he finally convinced me to send a proposal, and, in 2016, my book became the 100th PADS volume. Since then, I have regularly served as a reviewer for the journal and PADS, as a member of the journal's Editorial Advisory Committee, as a coeditor of a special issue of the journal, and as an abstract reviewer for the ADS meeting almost annually. Many people are surprised to learn that I did my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, as they have not historically had students who focused their attention on American dialects. But my advisor, Rakesh Bhatt, was certain that I would be successful in my work if I found my people. It seems the people of ADS and American Speech are my people. So, when Michael Adams reached out to me about the editor position, I was flattered again, but, this time, I didn't feel like an imposter. It felt right. Like Derek, I did worry that I might be taking on too much. The announcement of coeditors eased those worries. I have found Derek to be a smart, trustworthy, and engaged partner, and I look forward to working with him in the years to come.As new editors, we know that “what's past is prologue” (Shakespeare 2011, 2.1.289). It is important for us to look to the future, as this is where our responsibilities lie, but we would be doing a disservice to the journal if we didn't consider how we got here in the first place. The first three issues of this centennial year included entries that focused on that history, and in what follows, we reflect on how we understand the struggles and successes of our predecessors and examine how these reflections shape our plans for our terms as coeditors.Connie Eble's piece in the first volume of American Speech this year provided the personal and professional histories of two figures and their relationship which ultimately provided us with the space to write this article. If you have been a scholar of American speech for any time at all, you will have undoubtedly come across Pound's and Mencken's names. Mencken perhaps had a bit larger popular following, but Louise Pound was truly a trailblazer in the field. She was gutsy, often the first woman to do things, and she knew how to make things happen. It was her strong will and tenacity that propelled her to the forefront of her field at an early age and at a time when women did not often have such successes.The friendship between Pound and Mencken, nurtured and developed primarily through the U.S. Postal Service, was the beginning of American Speech. Like Pound, Mencken was confident and intelligent, and he was not afraid to take risks. It was his first letter—one asking Pound to share one of her publications—that started the relationship; as the author of The American Language (and its subsequent revisions), Mencken knew that, with Pound's help, they could make a magazine dedicated to language that would appeal to scholars and the educated public alike.We think they were right. Obviously, it is not a popular magazine, but since those early days, with Pound taking the coeditor position alongside Kemp Malone and Arthur Kennedy, American Speech has been the primary locus for scholarly musings on everyday language in North America. But, really, it has always been more than mundane musings. Because Pound and Mencken saw in those earliest days what is apparent to the sociolinguists, lexicographers, dialectologists, and other language scholars who write the fascinating research articles, book reviews, and miscellany that we publish today—“The law of life is change and growth” (Pound 1940, 110). That change and growth in language is worth exploring, understanding, and documenting. American Speech will always be dedicated to doing so.Michael Adams wrote a piece for our second issue this year recounting the history of the journal during the Columbia years (the early 1930s through the 1960s), when American Speech was published by Columbia University Press. These years were tumultuous, to say the least, as the journal was still finding its footing. There were issues with structure, communication, delayed publications, and even maintaining possession of submitted manuscripts. While there was a bit of stability in the editorship in this time (Greet, for example, stayed in the editor role for 18 years) and the editorial board could easily collaborate, as needed, because they were primarily located in New York City, the number of changes taking place during that time—to how content was put out, to how the publication was managed, and to who had authority over different facets of the enterprise—led Adams to call it “an experiment in how best to operate a journal” (Adams 2025, 142).What is great about preparing for the next 100 years is that this kind of chaos is behind us. Though “[i]t took a long time for American Speech to settle into a routine organization” (Adams 2025, 143), we think we have a really good groove going now. Charles Carson, who has been serving as managing editor for 34 years, has provided not only a great deal of stability over a number of academic editors but also a level of rigor, detail, and organization that is unparalleled in academic publishing. We certainly benefit from great technological advancements that allow us to maintain submitted manuscripts more easily and create a workflow that allows for timely feedback to authors and a consistent publishing schedule. And while we don't get together in person all that often, the communication among the editors, between the editors and the editorial board, and between the editors and the publisher is strong, clear, and efficient. In our year as senior associate editors, we have met regularly with Tom and Charles as well as assistant editor Lynn Zhang (张笛菲) and editorial assistant Macy Floyd to learn the processes that have been in place during Tom's time as academic editor, making the transition smooth for us and, hopefully, for the authors, reviewers, readers, and Duke University Press.As we noted above, Charles has been through a number of academic editors. In his article from the previous issue of the journal, we learned about how he joined American Speech and why he has stayed with us so long. Duke University Press has been a fantastic partner over the last few decades, and we can thank them for more than the typical kinds of support publishers provide to journals. We can thank them for Charles. As a student at Duke under Ron Butters, Charles became part of the team, and while ADS considered several proposals for a new publisher when it was time to move from the University of Alabama, the selection of Duke University Press made it easier for him to stay on.But it takes more than an academic editor and a managing editor for things to move well, especially as times change and as new academic editors put their own stamp on the journal. Over all of the reflective pieces in this centennial issue of American Speech, the theme of change is most consistent. In more recent years, some of those changes meant the inclusion of new kinds of editors. We currently have Katie Carmichael serving as associate editor for book reviews and Jeffrey Reaser as associate editor for the pedagogical section as well as Lynn Zhang as assistant editor and Macy Floyd as editorial assistant. Alexandra D'Arcy has served as associate editor for audio features since 2014 but is now moving on, and we are in the process of finding another colleague to join us in that role, which will likely be expanded to include the curated collections. We also have the “Among the New Words” team and the journal's Editorial Advisory Committee. Altogether, this is a strong team, and we will want to maintain that strength while adapting, as needed, to the ever-changing world.One obvious change to the editor's role as we move into the second century of American Speech is that there will now be two of us. This is not unprecedented (the earliest issues had Pound and Malone), but, for the majority of its existence, the journal has been led by a single editor. We see numerous benefits to our coeditorship: We each bring years of editorial and review experience; we have complementary expertise and connections in our respective subfields; together we will have more capacity, time, and energy for the journal, while at the same time running less of a risk of burnout; and, to be honest, it was far less daunting to take the reins of a 100-year-old institution knowing there would be two of us tackling it together! Although we hadn't met prior to agreeing to take this role, we have worked well together this past year and have built the kind of trust in each other necessary to colead something of this size and scope.Additionally, for the first time in the journal's history, the editors will represent both the United States and Canada. Of course, the dialects of Canada have always been included in the scope of the journal, but Derek looks forward to representing and shoring up the American Speech community in north North America.One legacy of Tom's that we endeavor to continue into our terms is the diversification of representation in the journal. This was a priority for him and was realized in various ways including inviting reviews from scholars with backgrounds that have historically been underrepresented in both the journal and our field and by building broader representation into the Editorial Advisory Committee. Furthermore, during Tom's term, American Speech readers will have noticed a change to the journal's description. Notably absent now is the word English; at the beginning of this year, in the first issue of this 100th year of American Speech, our predecessor noted that “our mission has enlarged to reflect dialectology of all language varieties in the Western Hemisphere” (Purnell 2025, 4). Today, American Speech “is concerned with any aspects of all languages and dialects used or found in North America and in the Caribbean Basin.” The “official” move away from the journal's English bias took place after the publication of Michael Picone's 2022 editorial “Just What Is ‘American Speech,’ Anyway?”and the invited responses to it by Michael Adams, Joe Salmons, Bob Bayley, and Derek together with Alex D'Arcy. There had, of course, been a history of publishing scholarship on non-English languages in the journal in practice, just not policy (as Salmons 2022 details). There was wide agreement that a policy change was needed, and it was implemented soon after. In reading the centennial pieces, we were happy to learn just how far back the practice goes. In some early correspondence about the journal, Louise Pound states: “There might be studies of foreign languages in America” (letter to Charles C. Thomas, Nov. 16, 1924, H. L. Mencken papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library [HLM-NYPL]; quoted in Eble 2025, 17).At the end of Picone's piece he pleads: “With the centennial of American Speech on the near horizon, let us ensure that its second century will be a fully inclusive one and a truly representative one, worthy of the journal's name” (Picone 2022, 20). Of course, the bulk of research in North American sociolinguistics and dialectology remains focused on English, and we look forward to serving as the premier journal for this research. But, as the first editors of the second century of the journal, we will actively seek out high-quality scholarship on the full range of North American languages and language varieties.Another benefit of coeditorship is that we will have more time to pursue editorial projects that go beyond the traditional duties of an academic editor. In particular, we hope to offer new professionalization opportunities for our junior colleagues; for example, we plan to run workshops on effective reviewing. We recognize that scholars from underrepresented communities are often both junior and overworked. If we are serious about broadening representation, it is critical to also provide supports that make it easier for our colleagues to join the American Speech community. We also hope to hold office hours at the conferences that both traditionally feed into our journal (such as the annual meetings of ADS, NWAV, and SECOL) and others that we hope will do so (like the Canadian Linguistic Association / Association canadienne de linguistique).We are also considering how to build a social media presence that not only encourages contributions and reviewing for the journal but also conversation and collaboration about the importance of the topics we pursue. ADS already offers a media contact list, and several members regularly interact with journalists and other interested parties to spread the word about topics covered in American Speech. We would like to tap into that enthusiasm and engagement by promoting such stories as well as other from the of our In doing we bring attention to the importance of in the North American that we will the popular magazine that was first by Pound and Mencken, but broader public through traditional and social media is one way we can continue that we take our first as we want to thank all of our we would not be to take on our new H. L. Mencken that first to Louise moving the journal to Ron the office for American Speech at Eble inviting with a range of from a to a student just her dissertation to reflect on the in which the of language in North America has developed and its in the new 2025, in the issue Michael Adams audio features to the stories and the American Tom Purnell for taking the journal through the last years of its first century and us the this as senior associate editors, we have and most from the of Tom We both came into this with working with Tom as authors and and have always the and of his editorial We now see that into that behind the the of just the the of reviews, the careful of responses to authors, the of and and has this so for the last and, as part of that, has us well to take over with first meeting in January Tom is going to be a one, but we him the best as he away from this course, the journal has been over the last few and a number of these editors by the and work of Charles of us when asked about the possibility of editor, that Charles would be the most important worked with him as both PADS and American Speech authors, as reviewers, and now as editors, we recognize that Charles more than and truly the work of our and his attention to detail, design and careful of content is his way of We look forward to working with him in the years to one of her to Mencken, Louise Pound wrote that she not want an editorial board of that's 1924, We don't want that for an editorial board is already in place and is to us take on at the of the next 100 We would like to thank our associate editors Alexandra D'Arcy Katie Carmichael and Jeffrey Reaser as well as Lynn Zhang and Macy Floyd we thank our Editorial Advisory Michael Adams, Sali Tagliamonte, Thomas, and It takes a and we feel fully by our While to have this team in place for our editorial we know that some colleagues will their three years and move their time and energy to other when we come at consider our team of piece here is likely the of these centennial but our pages in the of American Speech are only beginning to be We to Eble's in her piece this hope that, with the and that our future editors will continue to the of language in North America in new ways for new 2025, We will certainly

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