The history of the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma

Abstract

I provide an account of the Summer Institute of Linguistics’s (SIL) relationship with the University of Oklahoma (OU) from 1942–1987. SIL ended its linguistics summer sessions at OU in 1987 when legal issues were brought up about a public institution supporting an organization with openly evangelical roots. I conclude by revisiting questions raised in Dobrin’s (2009) collection on the relationship between SIL and secular linguistics.