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Interlanguage Studies Bulletin 1976 – 1984.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 OVERVIEW

 AN INFORMAL NOTE

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

AN ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTION OF TITLES

A NOTE ON COPYRIGHT

 

 OVERVIEW*

 

Birth and inspiration

The Interlanguage Studies Bulletin – ISBu (ISSN: 01659960) was founded in 1976 . It is the forerunner of the Second Language Research journal. ISBu (also known as ‘the ISB’) came out every year except 1981, originally in two issues  (free of charge) and later as two or three issue a year. The covers of each volume had a different colour. The editors of ISBu were James Pankhurst and Michael Sharwood Smith then working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. The last issue was in 1984. As the expanding ‘L’s in its logo suggests (see image on left), its focus was on how languages develop in the mind of the learner, more specifically the non- native language learner. The name was directly inspired by Larry Selinker’s work reported a few years earlier which promoted the idea of a developmental sequence or ‘continua’ of non-native mental grammars each one worthy of investigation in its own right and independently of any pedagogical concerns. His pioneering work along with that of Pit Corder and William Nemser represent the start of the research area called second language acquisition (SLA) which is to be sharply distinguished from issues relating to language teaching methodology. In 1976, research activity in this still very new non-applied approach to second/foreign language learning was concentrated in a few places in North America, notably in Southern California and Ontario.

 

Broader or narrower scope?

The original idea of ISBu was very modest. It was intended to stimulate interest and research in this new research area in the Netherlands. The first editorial makes clear that the primary scope of the journal was as stated above but since the rationale was originally to  contribute ultimately to the development of effective scientifically-based teaching techniques some leeway way given to contributions that included a pedagogical angle. Given the paucity of SLA research at that time, the contents of ISBu  could not possibly have been restricted to SLA topics alone and so the editorial policy was accordingly flexible to allow the journal to develop. As the journal developed, by the 1980s the contents of ISBu became steadily more angled towards theoretical research in SLA an other relevant areas of research. This facilitated its evetual transformation, in 1985, into the strictly non-applied peer-reviewed journal, Second Language Research.

 

A life of its own

Despite the modest intentions of the editors, as it turned out ISBu attracted much greater interest not only elsewhere in Europe but further afield, greater than they had predicted. Soon it was distributed, at a price intended to cover only the local printing costs, to 30 countries worldwide.  As the list of contributors (below) shows,  it featured authors who were either already had an international reputation in the area of focus (SLA) or in theoretical linguistics, child language acquisition and psychology or would later have become well-known. The contents of ISBu issues also  benefited from its close association with a related series of international symposia entitled LARS (Language Acquisition Research Symposia) that started around about the same time, also in Utrecht. These annual meetings brought together theoretical linguistic, SLA  and child language acquisition researchers . This webpage contains the following further sections:

* This  is also an appendix to M. Sharwood Smith’s CV.

 AN INFORMAL NOTE

The idea for the journal came about in 1975 during the 4th AILA  (International Association of Applied Linguistics) World Congress in Stuttgart and a spontaneous founding party was held in the hotel room shared by a sympathetic colleague from the Teacher Training College in Utrecht with whom the English department at Utrecht University was associated, Trevor Tinkler (also a contributor to the first issue) and its editors-to-be, Mike Sharwood Smith (mid-photo) and James Pankhurst (see photo below left : also where the first issue was celebrated at my house ). Following objections by the hotel management, the party was moved over to the conference venue. Finally, the last issue of ISBu (vol. 8.2.) ends with a humorous article by Vernon Perceval whose real identity remains hidden (although the list below might just contain the author’s real name).

M. Sharwood Smith

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

1.1 (1976)

  • Jan Rusiecki
  • Michael Sharwood Smith
  • Tomasz P. Krzeszowski
  • Eric Kellerman
  • Trevor Tinkler
  • Tobi Ringeling

 

2/3 (1976)

  • Catherine E. Snow
  • Bryan R.A. Jenner
  • James Pankhurst
  • R. Lee
  • Paul van Buren
  • Wolfgang Zydatis
  • Rolf Palmberg

 

2.1. (1977)

  • Jacques Ickenroth
  • Gerard Nas
  • Waldemar Marton
  • Eric Kellerman
  • René Dirven
  • Frits Stuurman

 

2.2. (1977)

  • Peter Jordens
  • Teun A. van Dijk
  • Henning Wode
  • Jack C. Richards
  • Carl James

 

2.3. (1977)

  • Juliane James
  • John T. Platt
  • H.enning Wode, J. Bahns, H. Bedey and W. Frank
  • Herman Wekker
  • J. M. van Els
  • J. Edmonson
  • Susan Parren-Gardner

 

3.1. (1978)

  • Henning Wode
  • Moira Linnarud
  • Birgit Harley and Merrill Swain
  • Håkan Ringbom
  • May B. Frith
  • Keith Busby
  • Eric Kellerman

 

3.2. (1978)

  • Larry Selinker and John T. Lamendella
  • Paul Meara
  • Ruth Aronson Berman
  • Barbara Gorayska
  • Lewis Mukattash
  • Joke van Geest and Joke Mulder
  • Nico Robat

 

4.1. (1979)

  • E. H. Schouten
  • Jacquelyn Schachter
  • Eric Kellerman
  • Arthur Hughes
  • Mike Sharwood Smith
  • Wil Knibbeler
  • Johannes Wagner, Gunnar Hach and Uwe Helm Petersen
  • Barbara Gorayska

 

4.2. (1979)

  • A. Levenston
  • J. Cook
  • Philip C. Hauptman
  • J. Wenk
  • Evelyn Hatch
  • Elaine Tarone
  • John H. Schumann
  • W. Marton and M. Sharwood Smith
  • Kellerman and M. Sharwood Smith
  • Nancy Backman
  • Gabriele Kasper
  • Frits Stuurman
  • Sharwood Smith

 

5.1. (1980)

  • Ellen Bialystok and Maria Fröhlich
  • Herbert W. Seliger
  • Claus Færch and Gabriele Kasper
  • Esther Glahn

 

5.2. (1980)

  • Birgit Harley
  • Paul Meara
  • Herman Wekker
  • R. Richards
  • Juliane James
  • Marga Schuurman

 

6.1. (1982. combining 5.3 and 6.1.)

  • Erik Honders
  • Herman Wekker, Eric Kellerman and Dick Hermans
  • Steve Lander
  • Tobi Ringeling
  • Rolf Palmberg
  • V. Cook
  • Lamice Abunahleh, Lamice Abulahleh, Shelton Allen, Bradford Arthur, Sandra Beals, Martha Butler, Barbara Drezner, Gro Frydenberg, Maha Galal, Susan Gass, Kim Hildebrandt, Litsa Marios and Terry Ostrander
  • Liliane Haegeman
  • Frits Stuurman
  • Uli Frauenfelder

 

6. 2. (1982)

  • Francine J. Melka Teichroew
  • Phil Scholfield
  • Dennis R. Preston
  • Anita Zeeman
  • Nanda Poulisse

 

7.1. (1983)

  • Janet I. Anderson
  • Ludo Th. Verhoeven and Guus Extra
  • Ellen Bialystok
  • Teus van Baalen
  • Teresa Pica

 

7.2. (1983) . (Special Issue together with the Australian Association of Applied Linguistics)

  • Ian W. Fry
  • McGregor
  • Howard Nicholas
  • Brian Devlin
  • J. Saunders
  • David R. Richards

 

8. 1. (1984)

  • James Pankhurst
  • Mary-Louise Kean
  • Jacqueline le Mahieu
  • Tobi Ringeling
  • Nanda Poulisse, Theo Bongaerts and Eric Kellerman
  • Diana Masny

 

8.2. (1984).

  • James N. Pankhurst and Michael Sharwood Smith
  • Karin van Helmond and Margot van Vugt
  • Rolf Palmberg
  • Ludo Verhoeven and Anne Vermeer
  • Jacqueline Boulouffe
  • Bert Bourgonje, Peter Groot and Michael Sharwood Smith
  • Vernon Percival (pseudonym!)

 (Names in boldface represent those researchers in and outside SLA whose long-term interests are have mainly or partly been in theoretical research and who are arguably, for one reason or another, more widely recognisable. Note that this does miss out the names of the editors and listed names of otherwise very distinguished scholars in and outside the field of education. No disrespect intended!)

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ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTION OF TITLES

From ISBu 1.1. (1976)

From ISBu 3.2. (1978)

From ISBu 4.1. (1979)

From ISBu 4.2. (1979)

From ISBu 6.1. (1982)

From ISBu 7.1. (1983)

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A NOTE ON COPYRIGHT

Unbeknown to the editors of ISBu, Sage JSTOR photocopied and made available online contributions to all volumes of ISBu. It should be stressed that no copyright was claimed by the editors for any ISBu articles and it was assumed this rested by default with the authors of contributions. ISBu was printed and bound by the internal printing services of the University of Utrecht for the then English department (Engelse Taal- en Letterkunde) of the University of Utrecht. This would seem to indicate copyright is difficult to work out but in any case, it seems that articles are free to download from JSTOR via university libraries and similar institutions. Link to JSTOR contents of ISBU here

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