Monica Macaulay is working on a new edition of her very popular Surviving Linguistics: A Guide for Graduate Students. We’d like your suggestions: What would you like to see in a new edition? What changes would you make? What’s missing that you would like to see? Do you have advice of your own to offer to linguistics grad students and those considering graduate school in linguistics?
The current edition has some sections that are primarily aimed at grad students in North America. If you’re a professor or grad student elsewhere, tell us about graduate school where you are. How is it different from or similar to what is described in the book? Do you think the expectations and experiences of grad students are reasonably universal, given the natural variation in everyone’s personal experiences? Or is graduate school and the academic job search significantly different in Australia or Japan or Germany or England or elsewhere?
You can leave your short or long suggestions here in the comments, or send them via e-mail to Cascadilla Press or Monica Macaulay. We’re eager to hear from you!
November 15, 2008
Suggestions for a new edition of Surviving Linguistics
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2 comments:
Hello,
As a newcomer to academic linguistics, I have an outsider's perspective on the field. The recent LSA conference in San Francisco gave me a lot of insight into the field. There are two interrelated comments.
First, linguistics and linguists has a lot of expertise to offer the wider world beyond academia. Second, this expertise is not being used beyond academia to the field's detriment.
There needs to be an addition into how linguistics see themselves. Not only should they pursue theoretical and experimental linguistics, for their own sake, but they should also look to see how some of these principles and results can be applied to the wider world. Apart of applying these principles to the wider world is helping students find positions inside and outside of academia. Getting positions outside of academia can lend prestige to the profession and thereby help raise more grant money to the institutions that offer linguistics degrees. For example, in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate schools, linguistics is not listed. Just having linguistics departments listed, even if there were just listed as a block of institutions with no rankings, would make the wider world think, "what are they doing that I should know about?"
Raising more grant money, in turn, helps linguistics pursue theoretical and experimental linguistics that employs a number of very special people.
The change for which I'm advocating is a meta view of the field vis-a-vis the wider application os linguistics to the "world" that strategically is an "inside-outside" approach.
Linguists should not only be found in academia, they should be found in the highest levels of computer companies, legal firms, government agencies, and more. But for this to happen, the LSA and publications like "Surviving Linguistics" need to promote that with linguistics degrees there are a number of opportunities for those who graduate with such degrees.
Hi Zach,
Welcome to linguistics. I'm not sure if you're looking for more information yourself right now about linguistics programs or about job opportunities outside of linguistics, but here are a few good places to start:
Linguistic Enterprises
www.lsadc.org/info/lingent/index.htm
Linguist List job listings
www.linguistlist.org/jobs
Linguist List academic programs in linguistics
www.linguistlist.org/teach/programs/index.html
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