A history of the LAGB: The first fifty years

Abstract

Since its foundation in 1959, the Linguistics Association of Great Britain has established itself as one of the three associations for UK linguistics, alongside the much older Philological Society and its own child, the British Association for Applied Linguistics, though the relations among the associations are not always clear and can be somewhat problematic. The LAGB's main characteristic has always been its annual or twice-yearly conferences with a focus on language structure, but it also has its own journal and has taken a lead in promoting linguistics to funding and educational authorities. The paper outlines these events and how the LAGB's internal organisation has evolved to deal with them, and ends with three choices that face the association in its second half-century.