i wish the stigma of going to community college wasn’t so big. it’s seen as a “lesser” option, when ALL learning is valuable, no matter where you get it from. it’s also a wonderful stepping off point for people who have been very burnt out by high school and want a smaller college and less pressure about acceptance, allowing them to have an extra year or two to decide on a four year college OR just staying at community college
if you’re going to community college this fall (like me), i hope you’re not too hard on yourself. you’re making the decision that’s best for you, and that’s what matters
What does it really mean to be “linguist”? Or maybe I should phrase it another way. What do you need before you can call yourself one?
Is a Linguist someone who got a PhD in a linguistics-related degree? Someone who works with linguistics in academia? Or what?
It is a state of mind. If you think of yourself as a linguist, you are one.
I know a handful of excellent linguists who never or not yet obtained a degree in linguistics or a related field. And I also know of a few professors of linguistics who I’d never consider to be real linguists.
Thanks for your reply.
I was thinking about this cause when we were doing our undergraduate linguistics course one of our teachers called us linguists already but when I called myself one to a friend they said “You aren’t a linguist. You’re just studying.”
I’m doing my Master’s currently and there are some claims that I personally challenge but I don’t feel confident in writing because I’m afraid my teachers may dismiss my [unpopular] opinions as simply “ha you disagree probably because you haven’t read enough literature”.
I’m aware that’s no way for progress but it’s something I worry about nonetheless.
ForGlottopedia, Martin Haspelmath and I had to come up with some kind of definition of “linguist” in order to determine who would be allowed to register an account and edit stuff. We settled on a definition that can be reduced to ‘person who does linguistics’.
Glottopedia is being created by academic linguists, i.e. linguists with a current or previous affiliation with a university or other academic institution (including advanced students of linguistics and independent scholars with an academic background).
There can be biographical articles on anyone who made a contribution to the academic field of linguistics. This is in contrast to Wikipedia, which allows articles only on “prominent” persons. (However, to avoid the issue of personality rights, Glottopedia allows full biographical articles only for dead linguists. For living linguists, the biographical articles must be restricted to links.)
If you’re writing an honours thesis, doing a research project/independent study, or even are just interested in meeting other linguists, why not check out a local linguistics conference or two!
(This year I am finally making the “go to conferences” post with lots of time in advance to get a project up and running: many undergrad conferences take place in December-April and have deadlines sometime in the fall or winter.)
I want to especially encourage undergraduate conference-going because I think grad students and so on are more likely to already hear about conferences and know people who are going to them (although depending on your advisor it may still be worth looking some up).
Even if you haven’t finished your project yet, you can get comments on a work in progress, or just come and watch things and meet people (but seriously, submit something if you can, it’s worth a try). For smaller conferences, registration is often just enough to cover food, and you can ask the organizers about staying with local students, so your expenses can be quite minimal. Sometimes you can even get travel funding from your own department, especially if you’re presenting (ask a prof, even if you don’t see it advertised anywhere). Audiences of fellow students are generally very positive and non-intimidating, so it’s a good way to get some practice talking about academic things, get a line on your CV or grad school application, and make some ling-friends.
I even remember a high school student who came to McCCLU one year just because they wanted to learn more about linguistics and meet people.
BothLinguist List and the LSA (Linguistic Society of America) maintain lists of international conferences organized by date, and I’m aware of a few undergrad-specific conferences (McCCLU - Montreal, TULCon - Toronto, GLEEFUL - Michigan, Harvard colloquium,Cornell colloquium). I’m not sure if they’re current, but I’ve also heard of OCLU in Ottawa, SCULC in southern California, and a rotating conference hosted by ULAB - Undergrad Linguistics Association of Britain. The current websites may not be live yet, but you can look them up from last year to get a sense of timing, and this gives you plenty of time to work on a project.
I think there are also many student-focussed conferences for both grad students and undergrads, although grad students can of course apply for the general conferences as well! (Heck, I went to one as an undergrad, and while I didn’t present, I met a couple undergrads there with posters.)
Edited to add, from comments: Arizona Linguistics Circle (which is soon, October 3-5!), Minnesota Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium, HULLS (Hunter Undergraduate Linguistics and Language Studies, in New York).
If one of these conferences isn’t convenient: try googling the name of your region or major cities/universities near you with the words student linguistics conference, and you may find something! Many smaller linguistics student conferences aren’t very well-advertised and may not make it onto major lists like LinguistList every year, so if you find evidence of a conference near you from a previous year, try contacting the previous organizer(s) or department to see if it’s happening again.
Can anyone contribute to a list of other undergrad or student-friendly linguistics conferences, especially in locations that aren’t already well-represented here?
I’ve expanded the list of conferences above based on more googling, and here’s some ideas for what to do if you don’t have a conference near you:
As I get older I’m finding that a lot of the “intellectuals” I used to admire are actually just condescending and pretentious. And also realizing how much more important it is to be present, considerate, and empathetic because nobody really knows what they’re talking about and anyone who claims to know everything about anything is feeding you bs.
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
I am also realizing that actual intellectuals make their subjects easy to understand, and faux intelectuals will attempt to baffle.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
- Albert Einstein
Agreed to all of this. I got into academia to learn and to help people become kind intellectuals, not to belittle or shut them out. I hope this changes with us.
college is catered towards the able bodied and able minded. school applauds people who can stay up all night, skip meals, and work endlessly. that kind of extreme contribution is expected. why are disabled people being squeezed out of academic institutions? why should I feel inferior because of some arbitrary and ridiculous standard?
The undying truth.
Not to mention, every college campus Ive ever been on is MADE of stairs and hills.
I tried to talk to one of my college professors about my ADHD once and he literally stopped me and said if I couldn’t handle it I shouldn’t be there
Read the book Academic Ableism on this subject. It’s an excellent read and I genuinely think about it all the time still even though I read it a couple years ago.
It furthers the oppression of disabled people by screening out doctors and medpros who might have personal experience and therefore SOME FUCKING SYMPATHY. I absolutely hate it. That shit is part of why we have patient hostile gatekeeping horseshit around pain relief and panic relief. Among so many other institutional sins.
ever look at a piece of art and think of how a simple picture, painting, music, or book transcend time. For it to live through generations of generations, era after era, and yet, here it stays, alive and beating. as it captured the hearts of many before, now it beguiles us with the same intensity, even bringing us to tears, knowing that behind each stroke, note, and word is another person’s soul laid bare. gazing in the depths of the Art, we reconcile with the ghost of its creator, drifting and immortal. in a simple glimpse, we became a part of the undying
oh the inherent homoeroticism of blood-soaked bodies clinging to one another, the red honey dripping in excess, forming a path of ruin and murder. eyes seeking salvation, the other clouded with carnal affection. the head is thrown back, revealing the neck of smooth, Vestal skin, the knife in their hand’s dig deeper– harder. there exists no room for a fair hero and muse. in the consummation of the crime, lay the crimson limbs of a villain and their tortured lover
The whole reason adaptations of Romeo and Juliet don’t work is wrapped up in the first line of the show.”
“Two houses, both alike in dignity –”
That’s it. That’s the entire point. The Montagues and the Capulets are both rich, noble families. They’re on equal footing with each other. Both are frivolous and careless in that specific manner that only the generationally wealthy can be. The show and its message only work if both parties are equally rich and careless. If you try to translate it into any other context (Juliet is an heiress and Romeo is a punk, etc) you may have a good story, but you lose the entire point that Romeo and Juliet hinges upon. You may have a perfectly good story in its own right, but that story is no longer Romeo and Juliet.
If you’re a dramatic (gay) arts person and the pandemic has ruined your potential for cinematic angst, consider doing what I’ve been doing since I was 16 and edgy and looking at The Unsent Project.
I’m currently in my final year studying BA History and Politics, and am in the process of applying for a scholarship to study MA History of Medicine. For the application I need to write an diss proposal, it only needs to be a side of A4 and I have some ideas but no idea how to tell if they have potential or where to take them from here. If anyone has any advice or experience with these sorts of applications or with the field it would be amazing to run some ideas past you. Thanks!
In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2013 production of As You Like It, Rosalind, portrayed by Pippa Nixon, when assuming the disguise of Ganymede, takes on a male appearance. With hair cut short and styled with gel to one side and a collared blue shirt, Ganymede looks as though he is a boy, perhaps a preppy boy rather than traditionally masculine, but a boy nonetheless. Because of this, her romantic interactions with Orlando (Alex Waldmann) come across as very homoerotic.
In Act 3 Scene 2, Rosalind/Ganymede sits closely next to Orlando as they converse about Orlando’s poems that he so abuses the trees with, his lovesickness, and Ganymede’s supposed cure. As they do this, they share what is presumably a blunt. This act, particularly in this context, has some undeniable phallic implications. Staged so close to each other as they interact with each other and even touch one another, from the viewpoint of the audience that is far less close to the actors as the camera that has filmed the scene, Orlando and Ganymede appear to be a gay couple. When Rosalind/Ganymede asks Orlando if he is truly in love with Rosalind, he responds “Neither rhyme nor reason could express how much” and despite speaking these things about the woman he is in love with, he looks at Ganymede with a look of such adoration that he might as well be declaring his love to Ganymede rather than Rosalind, though it would happen that he is actually doing both.
While Nixon and Waldmann’s portrayals of these characters have obvious sexual tension, when Rosalind/Ganymede directs Orlando to call her “Rosalind”, this is not only a man imploring another man to call him by the name of a woman, but specifically the woman the two characters have just discussed in great length that Orlando loves. Not only this, but Ganymede suggests Orlando aim to woo him as Rosalind. While it is her under this guise, Orlando does not know this and is agreeing to engage in flirting (more so than he already has been doing) with another man. He is very clearly interested in Ganymede as more than a friend and does little to hide this. During the time in which the play was written, there were no labels to be put on sexualities like heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or anything else and instead, sexuality was related more to actions in a single moment of time than any identity and who Orlando feels attraction to is demonstrably fluid. When Nixon’s Rosalind asks Orlando to show her where in the forest he lives, the simultaneous hesitancy and eagerness she displays make the interaction almost resemble a contemporary exchanging of cell-phone numbers. Thus, in this RSC production, Orlando and Ganymede are very clearly framed as two boys flirting with one another, clearly interested in one another and clearly queer.
In Act 5 Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One, King Henry IV has implemented a battle strategy in which there are numerous decoy kings impersonating him on the battlefield in order to confuse and frustrate his enemy. It works, as Douglas kills Blunt who was disguised as the king and believes he has triumphed, only for Hotspur to tell him “No, I know this face full well/A gallant knight he was; his name was Blunt,/Semblably furnished like the king himself” (Shakespeare 5.3.20-22). This occurs several more times offstage and in the following scene, Douglas exclaims “Another king! They grow like Hydra’s heads” (Shakespeare 5.4.25). While there is no number of how many King Henrys are in the fray, based on that statement it is likely a lot.
This strategy King Henry executes also connects directly to both the idea of theatre and throne, and while successful on the battlefield, could lead the audience to some potentially questionable notions about royalty and what it truly means to be king. The decision to insert numerous decoy-kings into the battleground is not something that could have been predicted because sumptuary laws were in place during the time in which the play took place as well as the time it was written and being performed. Therefore, doing so was technically illegal. In general, the theatre was the only place in which somebody of a lower station might dress up as though they were from any higher class, much less royalty itself. In the middle of a war though, King Henry has staged his own sort of theatrical production with several other soldiers playing the role of him. If we are to look at words alone, sometimes the place of battle during war is even called a “theater.” Thus, in a meta-fashion, Shakespeare has staged a performance with a man playing King Henry IV, and the king has staged one of his own and cast other soldiers as him, sumptuary laws broken twice over.
While doing this keeps Henry IV safer on the battlefield than he likely would have been otherwise, the idea that anyone could dress in kingly attire and thus in the minds of those around him, become a king, is perhaps the very reason these sumptuary laws existed. This scene demonstrates that when Blunt and numerous others assume the identity of the king and are truly believed to be the king until they are unmasked. Therefore, if somebody in Elizabethan England acquired the attire befitting a member of a higher class, they could become a part of that class with nobody the wiser. This fluidity in something that those of greater affluence and stature would like to be concrete and unchangeable arguably demonstrates the fickleness of being a member of the nobility. While it was often argued at this time that those of wealth and status had such because of divine right by God, this seems to present an alternative. They have these things because the society they have constructed says they should have these things and should somebody ingratiate themselves into said class with those things that qualify those already there, such as clothing, they could contradict this belief entirely. The play demonstrates in other scenes that this only goes one way– at least for royalty. Prince Hal may hang around with tavern folk, but it is rare anybody around him truly forgets he is the prince. Still, were he disguised while doing so rather than making himself known as the prince, perhaps he would be believed to be just another tavern-goer.
William Shakespeare’s Richard III and in TNT’sWill threatricalize English history. Both the play and television series depict a historical figure, but the way this is done caters more to their contemporary audiences. For Richard III this involves not only affirming his suspected villainy for Elizabethans, but both playing into it and inviting the audience to come along and watch his plots unfold as co-conspirators. Still, there is no question that even if portrayed by an actor or production as sympathetic, in his actions Richard III is evil. It would likely be approved of by his Elizabethan audience that Richard should be portrayed as deformed and immoral and that the Tudor dynasty that ends the War of the Roses should be a happy ending that ushers in better times on account of the fact the audience members were living in that present Tudor dynasty. This also would likely align with the perspective of the Great Chain of Being, a notion many Elizabethans subscribed to and something that is depicted in many of Shakespeare’s other plays. While Edward IV did take the throne for himself, being the oldest York, he was still the person who after conquering was supposed to ascend. If he perished, Edward Prince of Wales, his son, should have been his successor. Richard’s killing of others in line, such as his brother George, Duke of Clarence, and usurping the throne for himself is a flagrant violation of this God-ordained hierarchy and thus when Richmond takes the throne from Richard, order is restored.
Will depicts a London that is wild, raunchy, and likely not entirely true to the real Elizabethan London. Though London likely wasn’t as conservative as some period pieces, particularly older ones, may depict it, this almost punk-rock London is portrayed as intense and bohemian, somewhere not quite safe, but full of art, excitement, and potential. The trailer features modern music with a heavy bass and an encounter between Will and Alice Burbage that undoubtedly leads to sex. The addition of the theory that Shakespeare was a closeted Catholic could also speak to the contemporary audience viewing the show, particularly due to the fact the show came from the United States, not England. In 2017 when the show premiered, the U.S. was and still is facing religious turmoil. Earlier in that year, Trump enacted an executive order that effectively banned those from Muslim dominant countries from coming to the U.S. Even while the show was running its first season, a white supremacist rally occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, with attendees chanting things like “Jews will not replace us” and one even injuring and killing counter-protesters with his car. A London that is hostile to Shakespeare’s religion is something contemporary Americans could recognize if not personally relate to.
In this way, it can be argued that when one is theatricalizing history, one is taking meaning from it that aligns with the cultural values of the contemporary society in which the author lives, rather than the history itself. This is because history cannot truly be known at all; while it is possible to know basic facts, even ones’ personal account of an event in their own life could vary greatly from another present. Because of this, when theatricalizing history, it often makes sense even to handle it in a way that makes sense to modern audiences of the era in which the dramatizing is taking place.
“The truth is inherently practical, and in recognizing an idea as true (or false), a scholar cannot but want it to be implemented (or eradicated) immediately. For this reason, in addition to pursuing his scholarly ambitions, Menger served as personal tutor to the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf, and as an appointed life-member of the Austrian House of Lords (Herrenhaus).
Similarly, Böhm-Bawerk served three times as Austrian minister of finance, and was a lifetime member of the Herrenhaus. Likewise, Mises was the nationally prominent chief economist of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and advisor to many prominent figures during Austria’s first Republic, and later, in the U.S., he served as advisor to the National Association of Manufacturers and numerous other organizations.
Only Mises went even further. Just as he was the first economic system-builder, so was he the first to give the Austrian activism systematic expression by associating Austrian economics with radical-liberal-libertarian-political reform (as laid out in his Liberalism of 1927). Only Rothbard, who likewise served in many advisory functions and as founder and academic director of several educational organizations, accomplished something comparable."
I think that, for me, part of the appeal of data analytics / data science is the aspect of seeking structure in chaos. My executive functioning skills have been especially suffering during work-from-home times, but my graduate studies are helping me build the skills to take the chaos and disorder and translate it into an organized format that can then be analyzed, optimized, and used to better-understand the big picture.
Since I’m still floating around in survive-then-thrive mode, I don’t yet have the time to put together any helpful tips for others to consider; however, doing so is ultimately my major goal for this blog. Some topics I’ve already been learning and hope to address soon via new content are:
Identifying reliable research via 6 key characteristics
Building a strong hypothesis for a research study
Designing effective research methods
Understanding key concepts in beginner database management and design
Skills I haven’t learned yet but eventually want to share:
