The Eleventh International Congress of Linguists (Bologna, 1972)

The Eleventh International Congress of Linguists was held at Bologna and Florence, Italy from August 28th to September 2nd, 1972. This report on the Congress is divided into five sections: 1. Introduction to Bologna 2. Schedule of the Congress 3. Plenary Sessions and Sectional (or Group) Meetings 4. Reception and Excursion 5. Final Session at Florence 6. New Developments in Sociolinguistics The reporter found the organization of the Congress very poor.The acoustic condition of the hall for the Plenary Sessions was so bad that the audience could hardly understand the speaker. Sudden changes of the program for the Sectional (or Group) Meetings annoyed the participants, also. The reception on Tuesday evening was overcrowded. The excursion to Ravenna on the following day was not exciting not only because of bad weather but also because of mass group gathering. And the Final Session at Florence was boring and worthless. However, the reporter was delighted to be abroad meeting both established and young scholars at the Congress. He realizes that the scope of linguistics is getting very much wider than ever before. It is worth recording the fact that transformational-generative grammar is not the only linguistic theory available today but that there exist several other alternatives which are competing with one another. A number of Sectional. Meetings consisted of interdisciplinary linguistics. Such field as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics are gaining new but essential positions in the study of language. Linguistics is no longer a narrow subject: it is rather a crossroad of sciences and humanities. Finally, the reporter adds some information on sociolinguistic reasearch today: journals, monographs, texts and academic meetings