More Sauce Please! The Politics of SSK: Neutrality, Commitment and Beyond

Abstract

In this Introduction, we attempt to convey something of the angst we have experienced at various times during the long drawn out process of being commissioned as Editors of this Special Issue, of commissioning the authors and thereafter variously exhorting, encouraging and congratulating them (at a crucial stage, when the whole thing had got too big and the consulting referees had reported, being obliged to reject the efforts of some potential contributors); engaging the services of said referees, and later, with some difficulty, negotiating with them the continuation of the project; and finally, after an incredibly intense period of solid wall-to-wall subediting on the final drafts (Ashmore) and the writing of this Introduction (Richards), finding it all, almost, over: at last, at last! This is attempted through the deployment of an extended narrative metaphor which likens our field to a restaurant, and a lyrical coda celebrating anticlimax. We also manage to introduce the papers.