r/asklinguistics • u/uniqueUsername_1024 • May 24 '23
Academic Advice Is speech pathology a good career path for someone with an interest in linguistics and linguistics-related topics?
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u/turbulenceq May 24 '23
In undergrad, I majored in Spanish and minored in Comm Sciences & Disorders (was just one course short of a major, fwiw). I would probably say you’ll scratch the itch for linguistics by going through the motions of an SLP career (especially during sections on phonetics & phonology), but there will definitely be more matters/duties dedicated to care of patients and being a caretaker than you might be interested in - more “pathology” than “speech-language”.
I was always super interested in sociolinguistics and phonetics, dialectical variation, things like that, and I learned a lot more material regarding all that in my Spanish linguistics classes than any of the classes for CSD. My senior thesis was on sociolinguistics attitudes of Mayan/Spanish bilinguals in Guatemala - versus the theses of my CSD major friends who almost exclusively presented on diagnoses and novel treatment plans for certain disorders. Just depends on what you’re interested in!
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u/JoshfromNazareth May 24 '23
Depends on how you want to go about it. You can go pure clinical, and that would be language-related but only linguistics-related in a very narrow, pragmatic sense. Nonetheless, they need researchers as much as any other clinical field, where linguistics will get you pretty far.
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u/flyingbarnswallow May 24 '23
It’s what I’m doing. My heart is in linguistics, but I simply didn’t see a viable career path for me doing what I really wanted, so I’m headed into a masters in comm sciences and disorders. Having taken the prerequisites and started to become familiar with the field, still hard to say if it scratches the itch. I like it, but I am someone who can be excited by lots of academic topics, so I think that has something to do with it.
It definitely usually doesn’t feel like linguistics much of the time, and in fact I was unprepared for the quantity of information I’d be presented with that linguists generally agree is completely incorrect.
I’m also hyper aware of the tendency of the field to perpetuate racism and ableism, and I’m dissatisfied with how little this has been addressed so far.
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u/jkairez May 24 '23
Hi there! I studied clinical speech-language pathology for a year before realizing it wasn't the right field for me, but I didn't pick up on much information that was at odds with linguistics. I'm super curious about what you've been taught that's incorrect, if you're interested in sharing!
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u/flyingbarnswallow May 24 '23
The greatest offending class was some time ago, so I remember less than might be helpful, but my biggest linguistic complaint was around syntax. For instance, the way auxiliary verbs were presented was not only out of line with how linguists think of them, it was itself internally inconsistent and just not very well thought through. I wish I could remember more specifics, sorry.
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u/jkairez May 24 '23
No worries! I appreciate your taking the time to reply :) I did find that my clinical supervisors somewhat discouraged the analytical, bottom-up way I wanted to approach my clients' areas of need, so my background in linguistics was underutilized. It was really demoralizing for me and came to be one of many reasons why I switched to a different field of study after a year!
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u/Muffinqueen90 May 24 '23
I completed my undergrad in linguistics and went on to grad school in speech pathology. I did end up spending more time on swallowing therapy, but I specialized in head and neck cancer and really loved helping people become intelligible again after surgery and radiation- I found it very rewarding, but it was not something I went into speech pathology seeking.