Preface

The University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) is an occasional series published by the Penn Linguistics Club, the graduate student organization of the Linguistics Department of the University of Pennsylvania. The series has included volumes of previously unpublished work, or work in progress, by linguists with an ongoing affiliation with the Department, as well as volumes of papers from the NWAV conference and the Penn Linguistics Colloquium. This volume contains the proceedings of the 32nd NWAVE Conference, October 9 to 12, 2003, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The inaugural Charles Ferguson Prize for best student paper or poster was awarded to Christine Mallinson and Becky Childs’ “Communities of Practice in Sociolinguistic Description: African American Women’s Language in Appalachia.” Thanks to Aaron Dinkin, Aviad Eilam, Michael Friesner, Ron Kim, Maya Ravindranath, Gillian Sankoff, and Suzanne Evans Wagner for their help in editing this volume.