The American Council of Learned Societies, through its Committee on the language Program, is directly or indirectly responsible for encouraging, planning, and directing many of the projects in which American linguists are currently engaged. The members of this Committee are appointed by the Board of Directors of the ACLS; at present they are Norman A. McQuown (Chicago, Chairman), John B. Carroll (Harvard, Secretary), Bernard Bloch (Yale), Stephen Freeman (Middlebury), Archibald A. Hill (Virginia), Martin Joos (Wisconsin), Albert H Marckwardt (Michigan), and Henry Lee Smith, Jr. (U. S. Department of State), with Mortimer Graves as ACLS liaison officer and John Kepke as business manager. The following statement sets forth the Committee's view of the situation in which it works and of its own specific duties.