One of the best parts of my job the president of this association is receiving correspondence from researchers from all over the world. I would like to share some more of them in this entry. A professor emeritus in Brazil wrote the following to me:

First of all, let me greet you and wish you a deeply humanizing Presidency of the International Pragmatics Association, whose site I have just visited. I would like to e-mail you the chapter on NONKILLING LINGUISTICS I have co-authored. An abridged version of that text is available on the Google.

A young scholar named Ana Martinez-Insua from Spain wrote to me via the contact section of this website, and asked me to share the following comment with you.  It is in reference to my keynote speech at the MIC 2008 conference at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She wrote,

I would like to say that I found your lecture was brilliant. I must admit that I do not have knowledge about Japanese language, so your lecture was extremely illuminating for me. I found it really interesting that you called our attention to the array of pragmatic contents and nuances that Japanese language may convey. After the conference dinner, you approached me and told me you had liked my presentation. I just wanted to express my gratitude for this kind gesture. As a member of IPrA, I feel extremely grateful and  honoured for your having done so. Thank you very much indeed for your kindness. I do appreciate it.

I hope to make this blog a forum for all IPrA members to visit and exchange opinions freely. By sharing our ideas with one another, I really feel we could create something wonderful. If you have something to share, when you visit, please open 'comments' and let us know what you think! I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Lately, I have been thinking about how I could create a system to help those of us who are less proficient in English. As English is the major tool of communication of this association, non-native users of English sometime experience trouble in writing abstracts, writing papers, preparing poster presentations and submitting papers for journals. This is a problem I myself know quite well, as I among these disadvantaged participants. I recently received a letter concerning this matter from a well motivated researcher who is not a native speaker of English. If any other readers would like to share their thoughts with me regarding this, I would love to hear from you.