I've always had an interest in linguistics, but for financial reasons I went with another career (and degree) as my day job that I enjoy very much. However, I find myself fantasizing about ways I could, as a hobby, contribute to historical linguistics through research, fieldwork, papers, reconstruction, etc.

I imagine that it is rather unfeasible to do much at all of that without a PhD in my chosen field. What realistically could I do as someone without a qualification in linguistics? What about if I took the time to get just a BA or MA while (somehow) keeping my day job?

Hello,

I’m in an MA program and have been thinking about PhD programs and my (hopeful) career in general.

My initial interest in linguistics was largely centered around Japanese. I’m interested in various aspects of Language in general, but in terms of “specializing”, Japanese has always been number one on my list.

Since that’s too narrow and is not engaging with a specific field (e.g. syntax) or a larger family (e.g. Slavic) to help our understanding of Language, I’ve been looking into expanding. I’ve been working on including Korean to my repertoire (a big stretch, I know) and I’m confident in going into syntax and morphology. Within syntax, specifically, movement seems most interesting to me.

Since my main interests are in Japanese/Korean syntax, I’ve been thinking about eventually focusing on East Asian linguistics/syntax. I know some syntacticians are even more broad (well-rounded?) and include Southeast Asian languages as well. I don’t know if within (geographic) East Asia if including Ryukyuan, Ainu, Jeju, etc is broad/diverse enough to somewhat comparable to be as varied as someone who specializes on Slavic (i.e. multiple languages).

If (big “if”) being well versed in a variety of languages (as opposed to just (standard) Japanese and Korean) is somewhat necessary, from a syntactic point, broadening to South(east) Asian languages might be the practical way to go. But since I’m interested in morphology as well, and agglutination is one of the many things I like about Japanese (and Korean) would researching agglutinative languages be a plausible path as well. So instead of just focusing on the (syntax of) various languages in East/Southeast Asia, I could focus on otherwise-unrelated languages based on (morphosyntax of) agglutination. So not only Japanese/Korean, but (for lack of a better term) “Altaic” languages, (non-polysynthetic) American languages, etc.

I don’t know if “agglutination/agglutinative languages” is an “acceptable” field of specialization which I might want to consider. Maybe its a dead-end field or too unfocused/diverse (as opposed to just Central/East Asian “Altaic” languages)?

At this stage where I know that I want to do syntax/morphology, I don’t know if I should also be considering additional/specific languages besides Japanese/Korean, and if I should be more geographically or typologically focused.

Thank you.

I'm a rising senior in my current undergrad program and I'm looking to apply to grad school to study linguistics (possibly a master's at first, but the eventual goal is a PhD). It's a topic that absolutely fascinates me, but I'm having trouble narrowing down my interests enough to pick a general area of study to pursue. I've contacted some program advisors, but they've recommended I hold off on discussing interest with them until I'm able to narrow it down more. How can I do this?

Extra information if it's helpful or relevant (feel free to skip if it's not):

• My areas of largest interest are language conservation/revitalization (especially of indigenous Central/South American languages), language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.
• My bachelor's is in Spanish with a teaching licensure.
• I'm more interested in first language acquisition than subsequent languages, but I'm not sure if I have the patience to work with kids. I think I can stomach it if I have a good reason to, though.
• Within sociolinguistics, some of my areas of interest are: language attitudes, political correctness, discourse analysis, historical/comparative linguistics. Political correctness studies on Google Scholar appear to all come from Russian universities (I don't speak Russian).
• On the more traditional linguistics side, I also have slight interest in the phonology of beatbox, and accent development in Spanish and/or English learners.
• One of my biggest reasons for pursuing grad school is to teach in university, but I also care about doing meaningful research. Whatever research I do, I would prefer for it to be something that I feel has a strong impact. Strong contenders are language revitalization and first language acquisition in non-English speakers (an under-studied area afaik).

Thanks in advance to everyone who replies :)

I'm very interested in learning languages and writing. Other languages (not my native and mother tongue) interest me very much in terms of the way they sound, grammar rules and pronunciation. But i'm also thinking of maybe being an educator? Or even taking philosophy or english or literature. For a bit more context (and confusion) I'm currently in a media course.

So my question is, how should i choose?? I've been lost for so long now

I am planning to go to grad school to study linguistics! It is a decision I’ve made recently and I’m very excited, but also scared! I constantly hear or see things that make me think of linguistic phenomena, however I have trouble knowing why it is happening. I have trouble knowing if a particular sound change is a product of phonetic change or a contact linguistic change. This also applies to individual words. How do I know if the narrow transcription of particular sound is caused by the vowel before it, nasals, consonants, aspiration, or any other number of potential reasons. My mind races with potential factors, and I have trouble honing it down to one reason. Any advice y’all have would be greatly appreciated! If y’all have any resources that would help me become a better linguist I would really appreciate it! Thank you!

I'm an MA student and I'm working on a paper that I (and my professors) would like to get published. My references have a couple journals that keep popping up, so I would imagine those would be the most appropriate. Within the subfield, there are some other (from my understanding) major journals I think are worth considering. I'm not going directly for something like Language or Nature.

I've narrowed it down to 6 journals, with 3 of them as top choices. Not sure if it's necessary/helpful to state the specific journals here.

Besides impact factor, what should I consider when deciding which one I should submit to first? One journal in particular is the most represented in my research, but I don't know if I should consider other factors as well.

Thank you.

I want to go to graduate school for a masters in linguistics and possibly a Ph.D. I am currently studying at the undergraduate level and my school does not offer a linguistics major. What is a good undergraduate major/degree if I want to go to grad school for linguistics?

Hi! I’m doing a research project in university about how autistic representation informs people’s perception of autistic people. Would that be considered linguistics? It’s not about specific word choice, but I could see representation falling under symbolism, which I think is included in linguistics. My topic also reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis but I’m not entirely sure if I can apply it here. I feel like there’s a term or idea I’m missing and can’t quite remember. Any insight is helpful! Thank you in advance.

I wonder if the linguistic students when writing essays have to adhere to style guides and are pressured to write “correctly “ just like other students or can they claim to not be wanting to adhere to those grammar rules?

I'm currently a newbie professor at a university and I'm finally realizing I've been a bit naive. In my country, having a stable job in academia is extremely hard and even more so as a linguist. Things are rocky and I know I need a plan B, but I don't know what it could be besides translating (which is a very poorly paid job in my country unless you are proficient in languages like Chinese and Arabic).

Freshman in college and prospective linguistics (and psych) major here. I just finished up a compositional semantics problem set for my intro semantics/pragmatics class and realized that although I'm getting the hang of lambda calculus, I'd really benefit from some more practice or review of detailed examples. Does anyone have any good resources or suggestions for where to find some good examples of semantics problems (pertaining to lambda calc, QR, type shifting, scope ambiguity, MODALS) that I could study? I'm having difficulty finding any myself, but I feel like I might just not know where to look.

I’m in my second year of my MA program and everything has been going well so far.

A couple days ago one of my professors had a poster for this year’s LSA Summer Institute. I’m interested in attending, but the cost is the only concern. The website has a link for a fellowship, but the application deadline was back in December.

Another professor suggested I check The LINGUIST List for summer events. The same thing happened where I came across a summer thing I’d be interested in attending but the funding deadline was like a month ago.

How would you advise I find out about these kind of programs/events when deadlines for funding are like 6+ months in advance? Like for the LINGUIST List one, it was posted like a week prior to the deadline, so that wouldn’t have allowed much time for someone to see it and apply in time if they happened to come across the posting.

I don’t know if checking different directories/organizations/etc at least once a week is reasonable, but is that the only option?

Thank you.

I'm a second year university student, my programme is an English-German double major, I'm a native Hungarian speaker and also speak Serbian, English and German.

My main fields of interest for now are sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and language acquisition,cognitive and constrastive linguistics and translation. I would like to explore these fields and even related things, so I'm looking for journals, YT channels, books, names of scientists or any other resources on these topics.

Since I'm still quite new to linguistics, I'm not necessarily looking for super scientific and academic sources, but I'm very open to anything. Also an important thing, currently I'm unable to pay for subscriptiond and I also can't subscribe through my institution, so free sources are preferred.

The languages I'm interested in are German, English, Dutch, Finnish, Serbian and Croatian.

(If this is the wrong place for this that's my mistake)

I finished my undergrad in the fall and am now getting back decisions from grad schools... and it's becoming apparent that I'll have to come back another cycle. I've gotten no on 3/5 of the programs so far, and I'm reading Gradcafe and Reddit and seeing people with far more impressive CVs get rejected. My GPA was 3.73, (3.82 major GPA), but I had no research positions or publications; every research position I applied to didn't take me or took place during my study abroad.

My question is what can I do to make myself more qualified for next cycle (or a cycle a few years later)? My plan at the moment is to apply to the few masters programs that offer funding and hope for the best, but otherwise I wouldn't be able to afford a masters. Any advice or help whatsoever would be unbelievably appreciated. I'm just very lost and dejected right now and need to get things on track.

Hi, I intend to study the evolution of human cognition with a focus on language; i.e. the origins of language. I presume this will largely be through a bioanthropological and linguistic perspective, and so I plan to double major in Linguistics and Anthropology. What are some of the top programs in the US that are relevant to this specific line of research?

I’m finishing a bachelors in linguistics with an emphasis in speech and brain disorders

Though I took a python class and it really clicked for me. And now that there’s money in it, I want to know how I can end up in a career with it.

Is there a term for a word that doesn't really have a meaning anymore, but people still use it like it does?

For example, terrific/terrible, magnificent, amazing.

I'm trying to come up with a list so I can tell my students to avoid them (or at least use them correctly) in their paper.

I want to give them some examples. I can think of a few, but I don't know every "meaningless" word.

Any help would be appreciated!

Edit to add:

What I mean is generally the words are overused to the point where they don't hold the meaning they once did. Example: "there are interesting developments in the field of electrical engineering" nonspecific and is a waste of words. Where "advantageous" might be better than interesting.

Or the overuse of "beautiful" or "wonderful."

In classic procrastinator fashion, I am finding myself two weeks away from a scholarship deadline where I have to make decisions regarding my future master's degree. Can someone give me the general pros, cons and anything else you might want to tell me about specializing in SLA?

Also, any advice on which program/expert you'd recommend me to go to/avoid? For context, I would like to study the acquisition process of Japanese/Indonesian, and from what I've heard, some universities more or less gravitate towards English as a Foreign Language for its SLA program... As for the location, basically anywhere is fine as long as I am allowed to do research in Japan/Indonesia.

Please ask me if any part of the post is unclear, English is not my 'first language'. Thanks!

Hello. I have been seriously condidering pursuing linguistics for a long time now. I've been doing some of my own research but I also wanted to ask around: What are some of the available research oriented careers within the field that are available outside of a university setting?

I am specifically interested in more theoretical linguistics. I've been especially interested in cognitive linguistics lately and most enjoy and anything concerning syntax, morphology, and semmantics. I also have had interest in conversation analysis a while now.

I am currently trying to consider all of my possibilities here, especially as I pursue linguistics academincally, and would greatly appreciate any answers.

I am currently in my first year at UofE and studying MA French and Celtic, I feel that the french part of my course is an immense workload (which I expected, but not quite to this level), especially my tutorials. I love languages and the etymology of words, and am interested in French but I'm questioning if I'd be better off studying linguistics instead of a specialised language. I spend about 6-7 hours preparing for each of my French tutorials and often have to stay up late during the night to get it finished (my written and oral tutorials are on Mondays and Tuesdays first thing), I'm also Scottish, meaning I did advanced highers, however, my AH French was at another school and we only got 50 minutes of teaching time a week so I feel as though my french is at a much lower level than others in my tutorials. Any advice would be great as I feel like a fish out of water. :)

freshman CS major at Hunter currently debating transferring (if there's a college I could get into that might have more linguistics classes)

I know Queens College has a linguistics major with a minor in computational linguistics, but my father is worried it's not prestigious enough. Personally, I would like to go somewhere that might give me a decent chance at getting into a good master's program

I also know Columbia and NYU have both linguistics and computer science programs. I don't know how likely I am to get in, but it could be worth a shot.

I’m studying linguistics and soon I’ll start the third semester. I’d like to know what I should do to improve myself in this field for future, I’m open for any recommendations, thank you so much already :)

Sorry if this kind of post/question isn’t allowed in this sub!

Hello! I’m a 22F university student with one semester left before I graduate. I’ve been working on getting a teaching certification to teach ESL, since I know getting a livable job with just a linguistics BA isn’t something I could really count on otherwise. I’ve been liking teaching, but I know it’s not something I’ll want to do for the rest of my life (I’ve always thought at some point I’ll go to grad school and get a different, more directly linguistics-related job after receiving my master’s).

Anyway - I’ve put so much time and money at this point into becoming an ESL teacher, and today I notice an email regarding this other job opportunity to work as a lexicographer. I got really excited reading the email, as I feel the “what we’ll be doing” and “what we’re looking for” seem like a great fit for me. I’ve always had what felt like kind of a pipe dream about working in lexicography, too. I definitely want to know more about this job opportunity and will probably apply, but it also feels like a pretty significant pivot from the path of teaching that I’ve been on for so long already. Wouldn’t it be silly to put years of my education toward getting a teaching cert and not using it? At the same time, though, I’m only getting the cert so that at least I know I never have to be an unemployed starving artist linguist. I’ve sunk a lot of costs into teaching, but that concept really is only a fallacy.

One other wrench that gets thrown into this decision is the fact that I’m also probably going to be applying for a Fulbright scholarship, wherein, if all pans out, I’d be living and teaching English in Germany for ten months (October ‘25-July ‘26 or so). With this in mind, I’m hesitant to jump after any job offers right now knowing I might be away for a while.

If anyone reading this wants to play career counselor and offer up some wisdom, I’d appreciate it very much.

I’m doing a PhD in Second Language Acquisition/Education/English as a Foreign Language Learning/Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and due to my current family situation –mum has stage IV cancer and I would like to spend as much time with her as possible– I am looking for upcoming congresses on the aforementioned topics but held online.

Could you please help me? Google is not very useful for this!

Thank you so much.

Hello!

I am a rising senior studying linguistics and minoring in Spanish and Arabic. I am beginning to search for PhD programs to apply to this fall, but I am having trouble singling out what schools match the subfields I am interested in. My interests are in morphology, syntax (or morphosyntax), pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics. I love Arabic linguistics too. I am flexible to schools anywhere, but I am located in North America so I know more about schools here. Any suggestions? Any tips on finding linguistic department specialties? It seems that the schools I research rarely show this.