Committee

The LangSoc committee works tirelessly around the clock. We do several things:

• Arrange events for Langsoc
• Give support to students who are in need of grammaticality judgements
• Argue about the agreement markings in “the committee has/have agreed.”

Please feel free to contact us with any questions. For more technical aspects of the committee, consult the LangSoc Constitution.

The committee for 2012-2013 is as follows:

• President: Alasdair MacLeod
• Vice President: Aara Cleghorn
• Secretary: Ryan Hamilton
• Treasurer: Shyla Hossain
• Talk Organisers: Jennifer Heyward & Lauren Tormey
• Social Secretary: Jamie Sutherland
• Librarian: Pippa Shoemark
• Webmaster: Gina Bruckner
• Ordinary Members: David Arnold, Amie Leigh Fairs, Samantha Goodrick, Christopher Lewin, Peter Owen
• Foreign Correspondents: Gina Bruckner, Amy Goodwin-Davies, Kajsa Djärv, Karoline von dem Berge, Richard Littauer, Laura Tomlinson

Old Committees:

Committee for 2012-13

Committee for 2011-12

Committee for 2010-11

Current Committee Members:

President: Alasdair MacLeod (4th year Linguistics & English)

Alasdair was born in Edinburgh, studies at Edinburgh and works for Edinburgh. As well as English, Alasdair speaks Scottish Gaelic and writes in Teeline shorthand. He spends most of his downtime picking banjos, locks, and ingredients to add to his latest discomfort food recipe. He likes reading hard science fiction and listening to indie folk rock. Outside his role in Langsoc, Alasdair is also involved with The Student newspaper. His current (and enduring) passions are morphology and composing needlessly obscure Facebook puns. He finds writing about himself in the third person mildly embarrassing.

Vice President: Aara Cleghorn (3rd year Psychology & Linguistics)

Aara is from Trinidad, where they speak Trinidadian Creole, which is based on English, but very different. Since Trinidadians think of standard English as ‘proper’ and their own language as ‘bad’, she wants to help them to see their language as valid, so she’s interested in what makes a language a language, how language affects identity, and education in linguistics. She also likes playing the piano, bellydancing, sunshine, eating chocolate and going to the theatre.

Secretary: Ryan Hamilton (4th year Linguistics)

‘Ello ‘ello! I’m Ryan, and I’m the secretary – the one who sends out emails to you all and tries to deal with any queries you have as best as possible (or forwarding them to the right person)!
I started off on a French and Spanish degree and don’t regret swapping my degree to Linguistics at all, I particularly enjoy phonetics and sociolinguistics! So if you have any questions just drop me an email and I’ll get back to you!

Treasurer: Shyla Hossain (3rd year Psychology & Linguistics)

As Treasurer, Shyla will usually be found taking money for events. She is a complete monolingual, but finds linguistics quite enjoyable and full of surprises. Outside of linguistics (although linguistics relates to everything), she plays the piano and violin, enjoys playing games and completing DIY projects. She’s got a wide variety of interests, and is happy to answer any questions about anything at all, linguistically-related or not.

Talks Organiser: Jennifer Heyward (4th year Linguistics)

Jenny is one half of the Talk-Organising Dream Team for LangSoc’s Soap Vox lectures. Her linguistic interests include Phonetics and Syntax (and before you worry, she won’t inflict on you the much-dreaded Syntax talks in those lectures… well, not TOO often!). These interests are balanced by some more light-hearted hobbies which include an enthusiasm for sweet treats (both making them and eating them) which has led to jobs in sweet shops and an ice-cream parlour. She also enjoys writing, period dramas, and hiking, something which is needed to counteract the effect of a large amount of cake in her flat… In the long run, she hopes to become a Speech and Language Therapist and in the short-term is looking forward to meeting all you LangSoccers!

Talks Organiser: Lauren Tormey (2nd year Linguistics)

Lauren is one of LangSoc’s talk organizers for our Soap Vox Lecture Series—though the only organizer with a <z> because she is a proud American insistent on retaining her orthographic roots while in Edinburgh. Once upon a time, Lauren was a mean language prescriptivist who used to correct people on their grammar, and then one day, she discovered linguistics and realized what an awful person she had been and decided to change her ways. So now she just corrects people for correcting people. Outside of LangSoc, you’ll probably see Lauren at the cinema or dancing in public places. Lauren also does research with one of the lecturers in the department, so if you’re curious about what it’s like, feel free to contact her.

Social Secretary: Jamie Sutherland (2nd year Philosophy & Linguistics)

Jamie is studying Philosophy and Linguistics and he is otherwise responsible for hindering your studies with as many LangSoc events as possible! As a linguist, he is fascinated by syntactic theory and language evolution but he also has a love for cognitive science, philosophy of language, and maths (well, when his mood dictates anyway). Since coming to university, he has become increasingly skilled at forgetting French and Italian, organising picnics, and reaching the library borrowing limit. He enjoys tea, letter writing, spontaneous trips, early morning walks, fancy dress parties, opera, and the occasional dram. Any great ideas for socials, give him a nudge!

Librarian: Pippa Shoemark (4th year Linguistics & English Language)

Pippa is a third year student who originally came to Edinburgh to study Maths, but then discovered Linguistics, realised it was the best thing since sliced snowclones and never looked back! She has been involved with LangSoc since her first year, as an ordinary member, Webmaster and now Librarian. Her job is to look after the LangSoc library, and make it as useful and accessible for students as possible. If there are any resources you think our library is lacking, she’d really love you to let her know!

Webmaster & Foreign Correspondent: Gina Bruckner (3rd year Psychology & Linguistics)

As last year’s secretary, Gina started getting more involved with web-issues and since she enjoyed it quite a lot she’s now LangSoc’s webmaster – one of the few positions that can be held from abroad, as she’s on exchange in Auckland, NZ, this year. She’s more than happy to answer any questions relating to the website or the international exchange programme and Auckland.
Gina is spontaneous, adventurous, loves travelling, writing, sports, music, inventing words, mixing languages and finding spelling mistakes in other people’s texts.

Ordinary Member: David M. T. Arnold (3rd year Linguistics)

Dave is a bit of an old timer in LangSoc; since re-vamping the old English Language Society back in 2008 he has been President, Treasurer and Talk Organiser. He knows a worrying amount about who’s who in the department so is good to contact for academic advice and support. He is also a good contact for disabled student affairs, particularly chronic/ mental health issues. His academic interests are evolutionary linguistics and public engagement with language science.

Ordinary Member: Amie Leigh Fairs (4th year Linguistics)

I’m Amie and last year I spent an Erasmus year abroad, so if you want to talk about going on exchange I am more than happy to help you! In Linguistics, it is probably easier for me to tell you the things I’m not as interested in rather than the things I am because there are not many aspects of Linguistics that don’t interest me. However, I have a particular love for neurolinguistics, language evolution, and anything that relates to phonology. In my spare time I like to read, cook, and ski (though only in Norway because I can ski from my front door) and I’ve become addicted to all TV shows with a focus on our planet, but that could be because I love David Attenborough’s voice. I also like to talk a lot – so if you want to talk about anything to do with Linguistics (or anything else for that matter), feel free to have a chat with me!

Ordinary Member: Samantha Goodrick (4th year Linguistics & French)

I am currently finishing my year abroad in Toulouse, France, and I’m having a lot of fun doing so! The area of linguistics that interests me most is psycholinguistics, and I plan to study to become either a Speech and Language Therapist or a researcher in a related fields (or both if I’m lucky!) after graduation. I really like Medieval French, too, something I have studied briefly in Edinburgh, but have been able to explore in much more depth whilst here in France. I look forward to meeting all the new LangSoccers upon my return in September and having all sorts of language-related fun!

Ordinary Member: Christopher Lewin (3rd year Celtic Studies)

Christopher is a third year studying Celtic Studies with a strong interest in linguistics and languages in general. He is from the Isle of Man and speaks Manx, a language now being revived and having around 1600 speakers.

Ordinary Member: Peter Owen (4th year Linguistics)

A relative new comer to Langsoc, Peter is the Academic Families Co-ordinator. When not in the library trying to understand what linguistics is, you can find him in the gym or on the tennis courts, usually throwing a temper tantrum and practicing the more “colourful” words of German, French and Spanish. Inspired to study linguistics after traveling around the world and meeting loads of really cool people, he intends to make a living by busking around Europe after the student life is over.

Foreign Correspondent: Amy Goodwin-Davies

Amy is very enthusiastic about Linguistics and tea (among other things). She spent her third year at the University of Pennsylvania, which was excellent. Her primary research interests are morphosyntactic theory and psycholinguistics, and she hopes to be able to pursue these as a graduate student (location tbc). Please contact Amy if you are thinking about participating in the International Exchange programme at a US institution, or if you are considering applying to grad school in the States. She’d love to help.

Foreign Correspondent: Kajsa Djärv

Foreign Correspondent: Karoline von dem Berge

As there’s no way of holding on to the ERASMUS bubble, I decided to “get involved” with university life, as you would say over here. When I return home to Germany, I hope to take back a flavour of the community and commitment to everything linguistics related which I experienced through the excellent Linguistics department and the amazing EU LangSoc. I will try to set up a LangSoc at my home university, Freie Universität Berlin. Finding a society name that doesn’t sound ridiculous will not be the only obstacle to overcome. You should feel lucky about all the social opportunities that have been part of the EU experience for so long. I hope to bring at least a little bit of that back home. Good times as a double agent ahead! Feel free to ask me about my university, Berlin, Germany, my experiences at Edinburgh University (if you want to feel even better about where you are studying!), or even about being a language assistant in the Southwest of France. There’s stuff other than ERASMUS that you can do abroad!

Foreign Correspondent: Richard Littauer (MSc Computational Linguistics, University of Malta)

Richard has moved on from Edinburgh, but can’t seem to let go of things, being LangSoc’s helping hand. He was President of LangSoc at one point, and then webmaster, and also founded the Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain (ULAB) with David Arnold (along with IALS). Feel free to message him about anything to do with anything linguistical. He spends so much time on the web that he’s made a personal hub of all of his sites. It’s rather sad.

Foreign Correspondent: Laura Tomlinson

Laura loves drawing, writing, and watching old films. She’s a big fan of Fred and Ginger, and even she even does some ballroom dancing in her spare time.