#lingjobs

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 76: Linguistic jobs beyond academia

Linguistics professors are some of the most visible career role models that you see if you're taking courses in linguistics (since they're teaching the courses), but most people who study linguistics go on to jobs outside academia. Eight years ago, Lauren was trying to figure out what some of those job options were and how people kept using their linguistics training in doing them.

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about the jobs that people go on to do after a linguistics degree! We talk about Lauren's new academic article in a fancy linguistics journal about a blog post series she's been running for 8 years, interviewing 80 people who studied linguistics, from a minor to a doctorate level, and their experience and advice for non-academic jobs. We also talk about domain-general versus domain-specific skills, the literature by other people on career options for linguists, and Lauren and Gretchen's own thought processes by which we ended up in one academic and one non-academic career.

Announcements:

Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes, bonus and main, and you're still looking for more linguistics in your life? Don't forget to check out our Crash Course Linguistics series! If you want to find all the other places we've been on as guests, check out our crossovers page on our website.

Listen to this episode about linguistics, jobs and skills, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs Interviews - directory of posts and resources

Superlinguo has a range of resources about studying linguistics, and how this relates to skills, jobs and careers. This post links to all the resources across this blog.

Full list of interviews

Over 80 interviews, published between 2015 and 2022. Listed in reverse chronological order. The 2022 interviews were conducted by Martha Tsutsui-Billins.

Article summary post

I teamed up qualitative researcher Dr Anuja Cabraal to use the first 50 interviews in the Superlinguo series as the basis of an article, published in Language. This article also includes an overview of careers and skills for humanities and linguistics students, and ways we can do better at helping students connect the skills they’ve learnt with future careers.

Doing your own Linguistics Jobs interviews

The Superlinguo series has ended, but I still strongly encourage you to do interviews. This post includes information about why it’s good to interview people, and how to interview people about their jobs and careers, including how I ran the Superlinguo interviews.

Superlinguo Interviews featured in For The Love of Language (Intro to Ling textbook)

Excerpts from five of the Superlinguo Linguistics Job Interviews are featured in the second edition of the introductory linguistics textbook For The Love of Language (Burridge & Stebbins, Cambridge). I use this textbook across two different undergraduate subjects, including a week on linguistics and careers.

Resources slides

Everything has been brought together in this set of slides I put together with Gretchen McCulloch. These slides are made available under a Creative Commons license so you can use and remix them for your own needs.

[allthingslinguistic]

Part I - What is a Weird Internet Career?

Lately, as I’ve been doing fancy things like publishing a NYT bestselling book about internet linguistics and writing a column about internet linguistics for Wired, I’ve also been hearing things from people like “how did those come about?” or “I want to be you when I grow up.” 

The bad news is, there’s no magical shortcut. The good news is also, there’s no magical shortcut. What there is, is a series of smaller and less glamorous things that I did as I was starting out, which eventually built into something larger and more glamorous. So this is a series about the early days of building all these things that came to fruition in the past year or so, in the hopes that it may be useful for other people.

I call myself an internet linguist for two reasons: one is that I analyze the language of the internet and two is that I do so in a very internettish sort of way. In other words, I have a Weird Internet Career for linguistics. You may never have encountered an internet linguist before (hello, welcome!), but you've definitely encountered other people with Weird Internet Careers. 

Weird Internet Careers are the kinds of jobs that are impossible to explain to your parents, people who somehow make a living from the internet, generally involving a changing mix of revenue streams. Weird Internet Career is a term I made up (it had no google results in quotes before I started using it), but once you start noticing them, you’ll see them everywhere. 

Weird Internet Careers are weird because there is no one else who does exactly what they do. They're internet because they rely on the internet as a cornerstone, such as bloggers, webcomics, youtubers, artists, podcasters, writers, developers, subject-matter experts, and other people in very specific niches. And they're careers because they somehow manage to support themselves, often making money from some combination of ad revenue, t-shirt sales, other merch, ongoing membership/subscription (Patreon, Substack), crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Ko-Fi), sponsorship deals, conventional book deals, self-published ebooks, selling online courses, selling products or apps or services, public speaking, and consulting. 

But there isn’t necessarily much relationship between the type of weird internet thing someone makes and how they make money from it — one webcomic artist and one youtuber may both support themselves from t-shirt sales and ad revenue, while another webcomic artist and another youtuber may both support themselves from Patreon and conventional book deals. Some Weird Internet Careers have entirely transparent incomes through crowdfunding or posting their finances online; some have mysterious revenue that's entirely surmise (or may not be enough to actually be a career). 

People who have Weird Internet Careers sometimes start out unintentionally, by making things for personal expression or because they like being helpful, but they eventually realize that they're providing a thing that people need or want, and that there's a version of it that someone will buy, and that they've build up the kind of reputation which means that people will buy from them. (You can also definitely make things that stay being just about your personal expression, as long as you're aiming for a hobby rather than a career. Hobbies are great, you don't have to monetize your hobbies, they're just not what this series is about.) But I think a person could also start a Weird Internet Career more intentionally, or at least be more intentional about building an existing "making things for free on the internet" habit into a career, which is why I'm writing this series. Also, I want more people doing public-facing linguistics, at a purely personal level. 

The cornerstone of a Weird Internet Career is that you a) make a thing on the internet that people value and b) provide a way to convert that value into money. (If you have the first but not the second, it’s not a career, at least not yet. If you have the second but not the first, well, you probably don't have much in the way of career yet either.) The thing you make might be a recipe blog, and that money might be from ads and an associated cookbook, or it might be email advice on developing a new skill and the money from an e-course on the skill, or it might be a podcast and the money from bonus episodes and merch. And so on. I know one person whose Weird Internet Career is basically "making zines about Linux (some free, some paid)." There are so many niches.

You don’t need to be famous to have a Weird Internet Career, though it often involves building a certain amount of reputation for you or your thing in some corner of the internet, but most of that reputation is built by doing the thing, not by starting off as notable from something else. Some people start off with Weird Internet Careers as a springboard into more conventional jobs, some people have conventional jobs that they find unsatisfying and develop a Weird Internet Career in their spare time (that they may eventually quit their jobs for), some people keep going with both at the same time and enjoy how they feed off each other. 

So, I said I have a Weird Internet Career as a pop linguist. How did I get it? Well, I built it. The next part is about how that happened. 

I’m posting this series about Weird Internet Careers and how to build them to my blog over the next few weeks. However, if you want to get the whole series now as a single doc, with bonus Weird Internet Career-building questions to think about, you can sign up for my newsletter on Substack here, which will also get you monthly updates about my future Weird Internet Career activities as an Internet Linguist. 

Part I - What is a Weird Internet Career? Part II - How I Built a Weird Internet Career as an Internet Linguist Part III - How to start a Weird Internet Career Part IV - How to make money doing a Weird Internet Career Part V - What can a Weird Internet Career look like? Part VI - Is it too late for me to start my Weird Internet Career? Part VII - How to level up your Weird Internet Career

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs resource set: bit.ly/ling-jobs

This slide set has been created as a resource for helping linguistics lecturers talk to students about using linguistics in their careers, and for linguistics students who are thinking about work.

These slides include four main sections:

An overview of linguistics and careers

An introduction to the Linguistics Jobs Interview Series

Activities to get students thinking about linguistics jobs  

Links and resources

These slides have been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Feel free to edit and use them for your own classes, with attribution to Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch.

These slides have been updated to include a summary of Gawne & Cabraal (2023), which includes a qualitative analysis of the first 50 interviews.

See also:

Superlinguo Linguist Job Interviews full list

Doing your own Linguistics Job Interviews

Gawne & Cabraal (2023) Linguistics education and its application in the workplace: An analysis of interviews with linguistics graduates. Language.

Gawne & Cabraal (2023) summary post

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a  Director of Conversation Design

This month’s interview is with Greg Bennett, a Director of Conversation Design at Salesforce, a customizable, cloud software platform for customer relationship management. In this interview, Greg discusses the culture shock from transitioning to industry from academia, and how his discourse analysis training has impacted his work and career in the tech industry. You can find Greg on Twitter @gabennett45 or on LinkedIn.

This last post of 2022 is also the last in this series, and we'll have more in 2023 about the future of lingjobs!

What did you study at university?

I hold a BA in Linguistics and MS in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University. I also studied Japanese language and culture during undergrad. My academic focus was on interactional sociolinguistics—particularly, how users manipulate textual stylistics to convey contextualization cues during synchronous, text-based chat.

What is your job?

I founded and lead the Conversation Design team and practice at Salesforce. I oversee strategy and workflow for an international team of Conversation Designers who craft conversational experiences that “sound” like Salesforce and train language models to recognize myriad varieties of language input from users. I spend much of my time discussing with various leaders across the business the resource investment strategy for conversational apps and features that position Salesforce at the forefront of the market; scaling our resources and tools to expand my team’s sphere of influence across our ever-growing lines of business; and championing my team’s impact on our bottom line within and beyond the company.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job? 

I never expected linguistics to be as vital or central to my role as it is now. I’ve always had my discourse analytic mindset running in the back of my mind to interpret conversation and stancetaking in real time in all of my past roles. As a leader at Salesforce, I certainly maintain that approach to developing relationships with stakeholders across the business. However, since conversational AI is fundamentally about language as an interface for a technological system, I find myself referencing every aspect of my training as a linguist to contextualize and strengthen my proposals for a conversational solution—from generative syntax when debating the ‘conversationality' of a conversational app’s brand name, to acoustic phonetics when determining the pitch range for a voice app in 2019, to discourse markers when creating cohesion between turns of text-based chat with our chatbot templates—I basically spend all day, every day, using linguistics to form connections and drive product strategy.

What was the transition from university to work like for you? 

It was a huge culture shock! My first role outside academia was as a UX researcher at Microsoft. I was coming off the heels of having a limit on the amount of photocopies I could make in the Department of Linguistics to entering an office where food was catered every day, Post-Its could be used ad nauseam with nary a pang of guilt, and every time I had a research finding to articulate, it had to be done in a slide as opposed to a fleshed-out paper (to say nothing of my joy at being able to photocopy in color at the office). Everything required fewer words, had to be finished in a fraction of the time, and had to look way more visually appealing than anything I was ever expected to do in academia. I had to go beyond simply stating, “this is what I found in the data” and evolve towards, “we as a business should do y in order to make a market impact of z because the data say x.” (In industry, always lead with the “so what” and follow up with the data—something I learned from profoundly expert and gracious women in UX who taught me how to adjust to corporate priorities, read the atmosphere of a business, and succeed at advocating for oneself and one’s craft at the highest levels. I wouldn’t be where I am now without them.)

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

My advice would be that your title and your degree aren’t the defining characteristics of who you are and what you do. When I was in academia, I deeply enmeshed my sense of self and self-worth in my status as a graduate student, and when I took a break after the MS, I had to mourn the death of a huge part of my identity. I had no idea who I was without the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown. But, after a lot of therapy and soul-searching, I came to the realization that even if I didn’t have the title of “student” anymore, that didn’t mean I was no longer capable of learning, just like even if I no longer had the title of “Director of Conversation Design,” it wouldn’t mean that I would suddenly become incapable of leading product strategy for conversational AI. Look inward. Titles, accolades, insignia—they’re distractions. Figure out what truly motivates you, what fulfills you and align to the elements of those qualities that present themselves in whatever role you pursue.

Any other thoughts or comments? 

A quick overview of the company I work for and the evolution of its conversational technology: Salesforce is a publicly traded company that provides customer relationship management software as a service in the cloud. In 2017, the company released the Einstein Bot Builder, a declarative platform for Salesforce administrators to create and deploy text-based chatbots to their own customers for service use cases. Since then, it’s grown into an expansive feature ecosystem, ranging from chat analytics to reusable chatbot templates. The Bot Builder, coupled with Slack, which Salesforce acquired in 2020, opened up the opportunity for me to establish a design practice by which Salesforce can create unified, consistent, and inclusive conversational chat experiences based on sociolinguistic research.

Recent interviews:

Interview with a Research Scientist

Interview with a Language Engineer

Interview with a Natural Language Annotation Lead

Interview with an Artist

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork.

[superlinguo]

Linguistics education and its application in the workplace: An analysis of interviews with linguistics graduates (new publication in Language)

The Superlinguo Linguistics Job Interviews were a chance for me to ask people with a range of linguistics training and a range of different jobs about the links they saw between their education and their work. Asking the same questions each month, I noticed a real diversity in the thoughtful responses from people, but also some common threads.

I teamed up with qualitative researcher Dr Anuja Cabraal to look at what we could learn from the first 50 interviews. We looked at the kind of skills and knowledge people reported using in their jobs, and the advice they had for current students and job seekers. We also connected this to the larger literature on employment for linguistics students, and for humanities/liberal arts students in general. This article will hopefully help those who teach linguistics to make connections to how it is useful in a wide range of careers.

Having been so involved in running these interviews for years, it was great to work with someone who brought a fresh perspective to them. I’m also incredibly grateful to everyone who participated in the series over the years and shared their experience and insights.

I’ve also updated the lingjobs resources slides to include a summary of content from the article, and more resources.

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of post-study employability for students of linguistics. We begin with a review of the literature on employability, education, and skills. We then conduct an analysis of 51 interviews with people who studied linguistics and went on to work in a diverse range of occupations. We provide a summary of the interview participants and then conduct an analysis of the domain-specific and transferable skills reported and advice offered in these interviews. Finally, we look at how linguistics programs can use the existing literature and insights from these interviews to help their students think about careers. 

Reference

Gawne, Lauren & Anuja Cabraal. 2023. Linguistics education and its application in the workplace: An analysis of interviews with linguistics graduates. Language, 99(1): e35-e57 doi: 10.1353/lan.2023.0003 [published version - OA after March 2024]

See also

Superlinguo Linguist Job Interviews full list

Linguistic Job Resources slide set (bit.ly/ling-jobs)

Doing your own Linguistics Job Interviews

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with an Online Linguistics Teacher

Today’s interview is with Colin Gorrie, an independent business owner who teaches and creates linguistics courses available online to the public. Colin’s story is a great example of how one can design their own job using linguistics and adjacent skills. Colin’s interview also gives solid advice on how to try to prepare for the uncertain future, having first graduated in 2008 and built his business during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

You can follow Colin on Twitter (@colingorrie) or check out his website. 

What did you study at university?

I did my undergraduate work in linguistics at the University of Toronto, followed by a Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. Since I specialized in linguistics right from the start, I had the opportunity to take lots of advanced courses while I was still in my third or fourth year of undergrad. In my undergrad, I was convinced I'd end up studying syntax. Then, when I got to grad school, I ended up getting just as interested in phonology and morphology. I ended up using all three fields in my dissertation research, where I looked at some very "meta" issues in how typological evidence informs linguistic theory.

What is your job? 

I run a business teaching linguistics and related subjects (e.g., conlanging and Old English) online to the general public. My focus so far has been finding ways to introduce linguistics to people who haven't had much exposure to the subject, in the guise of classes on conlanging, language learning, and language and thought. As the business grows, I hope to add more advanced courses so that people can go beyond the basics. The ultimate dream is to provide a path where anyone can learn enough linguistics to be able to read the research literature and keep learning on their own over a lifetime. I don't have a particularly fancy title, since I'd have to give one to myself, and I don't think I have the chutzpah to do so! From day to day, teaching is of course an important part of what I do. But, compared to all the other aspects of running a business, the time I spend teaching makes up a relatively small portion of my week. The rest is made up of things like marketing, bookkeeping, administrative work, and product development (which includes creating new courses). How does your linguistics training help you in your job? My linguistics training is crucial to this work since it's the subject I'm teaching. But just as important is the experience I've picked up working in the tech industry. Whether your product is a software-as-a-service platform or a phonology course, you need to understand how to gauge demand, how to present the case for purchasing it, and how to allocate resources effectively to developing and delivering it. What was the transition from university to work like for you? The transition from academia to the working world was relatively harmonious for me. Knowing that my prospects were likely brighter outside of academia, I started teaching myself how to code while I was writing my dissertation. With the skills I picked up that way, I was able to find my first job analysing data at a startup within a year of graduating. I then went on to work as a software developer in a more mature company. During that phase, my opportunities to use linguistics directly were very few. However, the data analysis and coding skills I learned while in grad school were crucial. Finally, since I have an entrepreneurial spirit, I struck out on my own and launched a business doing custom software development. I did miss linguistics a great deal, though. So, as the pandemic hit, I decided I would dip my feet back into the world of linguistics part-time and developed a conlanging course for the general public. It ended up selling out, so I did it again – and that ended up selling out too. Once I realized that there was a public hunger to learn more about linguistics, I developed and ran more and more courses, to the point where the teaching business now consumes more of my time than the software business.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

I wish I had known just how many things are possible! I graduated with my undergrad degree in the inauspicious year of 2008. If you had told me that, by 2021, I'd be making a living (in part, at least) by teaching linguistics online, I'd have been suspicious. Just because something hasn't yet been done doesn't mean it can't be done. The world already looks so different than it did then. We don't know how things will change in the future. That said, you can help to make yourself "future-proof" by investing in skills that come in handy in a variety of settings: things like the ability to communicate effectively, technical proficiency, time management skills, and just plain old perseverance. I like to think it's no accident that all of these things can be trained by studying linguistics, especially at an advanced level: if you can teach a class, write a script to analyse experimental data, and navigate through all the requirements it takes to graduate, you'll likely have what it takes to succeed in a variety of situations. So don't fear too much how the market will treat you for studying linguistics. Any other thoughts or comments?

One of the best things about studying language is that so many people are interested in it in some way. We are given the raw material of public interest and it presents us with a great opportunity, but also a challenge: Can linguists engage the public more? Can we bring what we have learned about language out of the ivory tower? The more linguists who find their way into other jobs the more we'll be able to spread the word.

Related interviews:

Interview with an Internet Linguist

Interview with a School Linguist

Interview with an English Foreign Language Teacher

Recent interviews:

Interview with an Academic Linguist

Interview with a TV Writer

Interview with a Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights & Analytics

Interview with a Social Media Lead

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Interview with a Communications and Engagement Assistant

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. 

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Hawaiian and Tahitian language Instructor, Translator & Radio Host

This month’s interview is with N. Haʻalilio Solomon, who wears many diverse and interesting hats in his roles as Hawaiian and Tahitian language Instructor, Hawaiian Translator & Radio Host. He is also the president of the Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings. If you would like to hear more about Haʻa’s work, check out his episode on Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. 

Photo courtesy of Mahina Choy-Ellis and NMG Network

What did you study at university?  BA: ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language)

MA: LinguisticsPhD: Linguistics

What is your job? 

I am an educator, translator, writer and editor for Hawaiian language media content, radio host, and a researcher.

As a radio host, I get to play old Hawaiian music on a weekly university-radio program which I host entirely in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language. Every Sunday afternoon, I pull vinyl records, CDs, and digital files of older mele Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian music) based on a theme I have chosen beforehand. It’s so much fun because I get to choose different themes each week! One week, the theme might be “songs about steamships”, and another week, it might be “songs composed in the 19th century”. After I select a theme, I play songs related to that theme, presenting and talking about them in Hawaiian the entire time, and I also get phone calls that request songs related to the theme as well! My radio program is a great way to celebrate and normalize Hawaiian language in its ancestral homeland in a very accessible venue. 

Another job I have held is a translator and interpreter for Hawaiian and English language. This has been an eye-opening position for me to realize certain attitudes people have toward (or against) Hawaiian language. For example, even though Hawaiian is a co-official language of Hawaiʻi, some people think it does not belong in certain domains. I have been the interpreter in court several times for people who have chosen to represent themselves while Hawaiian, and most times, the general vibe in the courtroom is awkward at best and condescending at worst. Legal officers and judges, who are actors on the behalf of the government, have typically negative reactions towards requests for Hawaiian language representation. This is a problem, especially given Hawaiian’s co-official recognition status, but also because these reactions do not apply to requests for interpretation for other languages (which are not official). These experiences motivate me to raise awareness and bring justice to Hawaiian speakers by ensuring their right to interpretation is protected. Helping people have more positive ideas about Hawaiian language involves normalizing it in the linguistic landscape of Hawaiʻi. FLUX is a local lifestyle magazine that has recently hired me as the Hawaiian language editor for their publication. This is helping to reshape the linguistic landscape by adding Hawaiian language pieces to the discourse here in Hawaiʻi, but is especially relevant and effective because of the content we choose to feature. FLUX has always paid important attention on arts & culture, local politics, and other topics that are current and high-profile. To feature these topics in Hawaiian starts to shift the paradigm by de-centering English, even just a bit, and move Hawaiian language media back into a more prominent role. This also demonstrates the role that media has in language revitalization!

How does your linguistics training help you in your job? 

Linguistics grounds all of my multilingual work, and when I have to think about certain translation decisions, the theories that have been robustly developed in the field of linguistics inform my decisions and make that process easier. As a polyglot, linguistics is my favorite subject, and it has given me a foundation and training that informs all of my work.

What was the transition from university to work like for you? 

I was fortunate to start teaching Hawaiian as a lecturer, and then I started pursuing an MA in Linguistics to justify my promotion to an instructor, so the transition felt serendipitous and mutually beneficial for my graduate studies and my career. And in the context of language revitalization, as in Hawaiʻi, a career is synonymous with a way of life, philosophy, and a calling to which I am committed both professionally and personally.

Do you have any advice you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

Start making flashcards to memorize the IPA. HAHA! But seriously, linguistics as a formal training certainly has an application in certain careers, like research, preservation, education, etc. But I have been blessed to have so many professors, mentors, and cheerleaders who have always helped me realize how my training as a linguist can be applied all sorts of interdisciplinary projects. This is always so much fun for me! Any other thoughts or comments?

I feel giddy when I tell others "I am a linguist". The doors that this field has opened for me have come back to bless me tenfold. Related interviews:

Interview with an academic linguist

Interview with an Interpreter

Interview with an ESL teacher, coach and podcaster

Interview with a Freelance Translator and Editor

Interview with a Language Revitalisation Program Director

Recent interviews:

Interview with a Customer Success Manager

Interview with an Impact Lead

Interview with an Online Linguistics Teacher

Interview with an Academic Linguist

Interview with a TV Writer

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List 

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. 

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with an academic linguist

I started the Linguistics Jobs interview series because I was coming to the end of a post-doctoral research contract and I had no idea how much longer my academic career was viable. I'm glad I decided to do my job thinking out loud, because six years and over 60 interviews later, this series provides a rich collection of personal stories about the wide range of careers for people who studied linguistics. It was only in 2021, 8 years after finishing my PhD, that I was lucky enough to sign an ongoing contract for an academic job (’lucky’ being a deliberate word choice there).

I have never interviewed an academic linguist who works in a linguistics department for this series. This was an intentional choice, and I made it for two reasons. The first is that this is the career that the majority of academic linguists are most familiar with, so your own professors can tell you about it. The second is that the overwhelming majority of people who study linguistics (even at graduate level) won’t end up in academic roles, even if they’re great linguists (cf. ‘lucky’).

Having said all of that, I’m often asked about how I became a linguist. It seems only fair that I subject myself to the same set of questions I ask of everyone else. I’m also participating in the interview series because I’m stepping back from running these interviews. The series will now be managed by the excellent, wonderful (and, may I mention, very employable) Martha Tsutsui Billins. You’ll still hear from a linguist about their study and careers every month. After 6 years of running Superlinguo solo, it’s delightful that it’s once again a team project!

What did you study at university?

I took a Bachelor of Arts and majored in both Art History and Linguistics. I came to university convinced that Art History was what I loved, and I wanted to work in a museum or gallery. By the end of third year I realised that I had enjoyed linguistics more every semester. I changed plans in the last semester of third year, which is amusing to look back on because I’m not usually one to shake things up like that. I did a fourth year honours project in Linguistics with Barb Kelly, and really appreciated the chance to get to do research. That 13k word thesis was the biggest project I had ever done and I learnt a lot about my own capacity as well as the topic (gesture perception). I’ve told a longer version of this story before. The chance to learn about the world and about yourself and make a new path is one of the things I love about a BA.

After honours I left the university, because I wasn’t sure what to do. The office job I ended up with was fine, but I returned to conversations with Barb and applied for a PhD program with her just as the global financial crisis took off. I know there’s a lot of advice that suggests you look around for places to go to grad school, but I returned to my undergrad department. This was because I didn’t have the networks or knowledge about looking for other programs, but also partly because I already knew I had a good working relationship with Barb and that seemed more important in the long run, and I still happily stand by that choice.

My PhD was on the use of evidentiality in the Lamjung variety of Yolmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal. I like that the project involved primary documentation, and spending time working with Yolmo speakers in Nepal. I also used my time in grad school to try other things, including writing about internet linguistics, teaching undergrad classes, and I even started this very blog!

What is your job? 

I am a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics. It is an ongoing academic position at La Trobe University (Australia), and includes both teaching and research. The teaching part includes undergraduate classes and graduate supervision. I really love teaching and sharing linguistics with students. These days my research is mostly focused on gesture studies, including exploring cross-cultural variation in gesture. I also still work on Yolmo and Syuba grammar, and internet language use. 

There was certainly not a straight line between completing my PhD and this role. I did three post-doctoral research projects in three different countries, and in the first 18 months after completing I had about 10 very short teaching, research and admin jobs.  How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

I teach linguistics and do linguistic research every day. But there are lots of other ways linguistics helps too! I think the main thing is that you can apply a linguistic analysis to any puzzle you’re working on. In my lingcomm work, for example, I often think about whether a news article or video was satisfying to watch, and what features of language and communication did the creator use to make me feel like that.

What was the transition from university to work like for you?

It can feel weird in academia, because you never leave the university. PhD candidates exist in a weird space between student and employee. You are still certainly learning, but also teaching and doing some work that appears indistingushable from that of academic staff (like attending conferences and publishing research). You have to shift your own mindset about what the university is and how you operate within it.

It was particularly weird for me because many of the staff knew me as an undergrad, a graduate student and then as a colleague. It was certainly good to leave Australia for a while and return to work at a different university.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

You can take your linguistics with you into pretty much any career.

A thing that wasn’t common enough in my BA or even during my PhD was the sense that being a linguistic was something that could help outside of an academic context. I don’t know how much this has changed in general, but it’s certainly changed in the conversations and approach that I now have, and I’m grateful for that. Any other thoughts or comments?

I have learnt so much from these interviews over the years. I’m really grateful to everyone who has shared their story.

Related interviews:

Interview with a University Course Coordinator

Interview with a Research Coordinator, Speech Pathologist

Interview with an Internet Linguist

Recent interviews

Interview with a TV Writer

Interview with a Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights & Analytics

Interview with a Social Media Lead

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Interview with a Communications and Engagement Assistant

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork. 

[superlinguo]

Doing your own Linguistics Job Interviews

After eight years and over 80 interviews, the monthly Superlinguo Linguistics Job Interviews series will wrap up at the end of 2022. You can see the full list linking to the interviews here. I have learnt so much from the stories of people who have gone on to a wide range of jobs and careers, and who make use of their linguistic knowledge in their jobs. Thanks to Martha Tsutsui Billins, who has been running the interviews in 2022, I’ve enjoyed reading them as an audience member!

While it is the end of regular scheduled interviews, this is far from the last I will have to say about linguistics and its use in different workplaces and careers. There will be some updates in 2023, which I’m looking forward to sharing with you. I also want to encourage you to do your own interviews!

Why interview people about linguistics and jobs?

There are any number of good reasons to do them. Perhaps:

1. You studied linguistics and now you use those skills, insights and experiences in your current job, career, or life. Maybe it was a whole PhD? Or perhaps just one specific course/subject that shaped your understanding of language? You can follow the Linguistics Job Interviews process and share your experiences with your social media networks! I did this for the Superlinguo series and enjoyed the opportunity to reflect.

2. You are a student or worker who is thinking about jobs and careers and you want to talk to people to learn about different jobs and careers. You can do this for your own information, as an informal coffee chat, or maybe you want to publish and share what you’ve learnt for other students where you study, or other people online. This is why I did the Superlinguo series for the first four or five years, as I navigated study and then precarious employment.

3. You work in a linguistics program at a university or college and want to check in with your former students. Perhaps you want to ask them to share their experiences with your current students, or maybe you want to do some planning around the structure and content of your program. I’ve made use of the Superlinguo series for the last few years for both of these reasons.

As you can see, I have run the Superlinguo Linguistics Jobs Interview series for all three of these reasons at different times!

How to do interviews

I started doing interviews using my own networks, and those of my friends and teachers at my university. I have always run them as email interviews, because I was most interested in giving people the time and space to write answers they were happy with. If you are doing interviews for your own career planning you might find that asking someone for coffee or a phone chat that can go on different tangents is more useful.

You can also “cold” contact people. Sometimes people on twitter or linkedin will say they’re happy to be contacted about their careers. When you contact someone, even if they’re happy to be messaged, remember they’re doing you a favour and may not always have time. People often don’t get back to you, it’s nothing personal, people are busy with their own jobs and colleagues. This is why often an existing personal connection is so useful.

Always make sure that you know what you want to do with the interview, and that you make that clear to people when you contact them. If you just want an informal short chat, that’s very different to asking if you can share in the print magazine of your college or posting something to the internet.

These kind of interviews, where you ask someone about their experiences, are known as Informational Interviews. The Linguistics Jobs Resources slide set (bit.ly/ling-jobs) has lots of information and links to other resources about how you can run your own informational interviews, either for yourself, a careers fair at your institution or for sharing online.

What I put into my interviews

As I said above, I always conducted interviews by email. This was mostly because I wasn’t doing informational interviews for my own career planning.

I always ask the same set of questions. I appreciate the very different responses I would get from people in different jobs and different stages of their careers. Below I have bolded the bits I kept in the published interview, and which bits were there are prompts for the person being interviewed:

What is your job title? (used to title the interview and write the intro)

What did you study at university? (What was your degree? What linguistics did you study? What else?)

What is your job? (Fancy title? What do you do day-to-day?)

How does your linguistics training help you in your job? (Or, does it help at all?)

What was the transition from university to work like for you? (both in general terms and in terms of applying your linguistics in a workplace)

Do you have any advice you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

Any other thoughts or comments? (Also, is there anything I should be asking that I'm not?)

I added question five about the transition from uni to work only a couple of years ago, when I realised that was a gap in the interviews that provided useful information. You don’t have to use these questions specifically, but I have found they provide a good starting point.

Let me know if you do any public interviews so I can share them too!

If you share your own job experience on public social media, or if you interview people online about their linguistics job experience, please do tag me on twitter or email (superlinguo æ gmail dot com). I plan to keep sharing and aggregating job resources.

Resources

The Linguistics Jobs Resources slide set (bit.ly/ling-jobs) 

Superlinguo Linguist Job Interviews full list

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Customer Success Manager

This month’s interview is with Nicole Yamamoto, who works remotely from Mexico City as a Customer Success Manager. In this interview, Nicole shares how her studies in linguistics impacts not only her current role working at a diverse international startup company, but also her former job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program.

You can follow Nicole on Instagram (@nkyams) and on LinkedIn.

What did you study at university? 

I did a Bachelor's in Humanities: Applied Linguistics in 2011 at the University of Victoria, and a Diploma in Business Administration: Marketing at Camosun College in 2018. 

What is your job? 

I work for a global HR tech company as a Customer Success Manager. A lot of people think this means my work is in the realm of recruiting but what I actually do is onboarding. I help other companies who wish to hire remote workers around the world put everything in place. For example, my day-to-day job involves processing employment contracts and ensuring they are compliant with local labour laws of the country where the worker resides. This often involves guiding our clients on the differences between a statutory benefit versus a customary one in order to help them offer a competitive benefits package to their candidates. I also work directly with local partners in many countries around the world to help set up the workers' payroll, pension, and health insurance.  

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

My linguistics training is very helpful in my job. Working in a global HR company means that on a day-to-day basis, I am communicating with people whose first language is not English. This includes external clients but also internally as we are a fully distributed team located across 50+ different countries. My linguistics training helps in 3 different areas: communication, cultural understanding, and training. As part of my applied linguistics degree I studied second language acquisition which has given me a deeper understanding of how language develops and is understood. This allows me to phrase my sentences and shape my communication in a way that I know will be more intelligible to non-native speakers of English. It isn't possible to study linguistics without also learning about cultural differences since language and culture are so intertwined. So, this allows me to be more patient, understanding and even appreciative of the cultural differences between my colleagues and I. Lastly, as one of the more senior members on the team, I often help and train newer employees who have joined the company. Due to my educational background in linguistics and teaching experience, this makes it easier for me to train others and feel comfortable while doing it.

What was the transition from university to work like for you? 

After university, I applied for and was accepted into the JET program in 2012. For those unfamiliar with the JET Program, it is a program which was started by the Japanese government in order to improve the English proficiency of Japanese students. The program employs approximately 4,000 native English speakers from around the world to teach at public schools across Japan. This was a great transition from university to work that I highly recommend because it provided a decent salary post-university and allowed me to gain practical work experience while enjoying travel, meeting new people, and being exposed to different cultures. It is still one of the most impactful times of my life even ten years later and has greatly shaped who I am today.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university? 

Yes, I began down the path of linguistics because I had originally wanted to be a translator and a career counselor told me linguistics would be useful. Knowing what I know now, this was not the correct path to becoming a translator as there are specific training programs for that. I realize now that the career counselor likely told me this because she carried the same misconception many people seem to hold about linguistics. Whenever I tell people I studied linguistics their first follow-up question nine out of ten times is "so, how many languages do you speak?" Those who have studied linguistics know well that it is not about acquiring multiple languages but about understanding the structure and etymology of languages. In the end, I wish someone had told me that the skills and knowledge you acquire studying linguistics are beneficial as transferable skills but unless you are looking to go into academia, the job opportunities will not be diverse or plentiful.

Related interviews:

Interview with a Client Services Manager

Interview with an English Foreign Language Teacher

Interview with an ESL teacher, coach and podcaster

Recent interviews:

Interview with an Impact Lead

Interview with an Online Linguistics Teacher

Interview with an Academic Linguist

Interview with a TV Writer

Interview with a Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights & Analytics

Interview with a Social Media Lead

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork.

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with an Impact Lead

This month’s interview is with Shivonne Gates, who works at Frontline, a charity which aims to create social change by developing excellent social work practice and leadership. This interview is a great example of how one can conduct research and utilize mixed methods outside of academia, as Shivonne does on a daily basis in her role as an Impact Lead. You can follow Shivonne on Twitter (@ShivGates) and LinkedIn. You can hear more about Shivonne‘s academic work, and post-PhD career, in Lingthusiasm Episode 48: Who you are in high school, linguistically speaking.

What did you study at university? 

I have three degrees in linguistics! BA, MA and PhD. My undergrad was from the University of Sheffield, which gave me a really broad and varied grounding in lots of subfields of linguistics (sociolinguistics, phonetics, historical linguistics, language acquisition, dialectology, syntax, stylistics... all the good stuff!). I then focused in on sociolinguistics during my MA at North Carolina State University which was a great springboard into my PhD at Queen Mary University of London where my thesis explored linguistic variation and ethnic identity among adolescents in East London. What is your job? 

In my new job as Impact Lead for Frontline, I am designing and delivering a programme of research focused on demonstrating the longer-term outcomes and impacts of the Frontline social work training programme. Essentially, Frontline wants to know how effective their programme is at training top-notch social workers, and as a result how this programme leads to better outcomes for the children and families supported by these social workers.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job? 

In lots of ways! From a practical research skills perspective, my training in sociolinguistics was a helpful stepping stone into mixed methods social research. For example, for sociolinguistic interviews we use question modules, which is very similar to a discussion/topic guide used for in-depth qualitative interviews. And my understanding of inferential statistical modelling has been helpful in being able to pick up impact evaluation methodologies quickly. I also got lots of transferrable skills: I am now an excellent writer and not daunted by producing research reports - they feel like a walk in the park compared with a PhD thesis! I also think conference and teaching experience were really helpful in honing my skills in synthesising complex information, public speaking, and working with and supporting junior staff.

What was the transition from university to work like for you? 

Honestly, it was quite difficult. My first job after my PhD was as a social researcher at the National Centre for Social Research. Because I was no longer directly doing linguistics in my job, I really missed it (and still do). I also found the transition from working on my own research to working on a team led by someone else quite hard (although I did love the support of working on a team!). I also found it hard not having the time to dive deep into research in the way you do in academia, as I was across multiple projects and had much tighter deadlines than you do in academia. But, once I adjusted, I actually really enjoyed the pace, loved how much I learned in such a short space of time and thrived working across lots of different projects within a broad policy area.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

I wish I had known how much of a financial undertaking it is to do a PhD! Even though I was funded, I feel I'm still playing catch up financially from having four years in my 20s when I wasn't earning very much money. I also received some advice that I wish I had ignored: that it is good to move around for your degrees. Yes, it can be a good way to broaden your training, but it's not a dealbreaker for academic jobs and staying in one place might have given me more stability (and therefore headspace and better mental health) which really helps with managing the stress of a PhD. I also wish someone had warned me about how emotionally invested you become in your thesis, which makes it really difficult to deal with days/weeks that don't go as you intended. I coped well with my BA and MA, so the emotional and mental health challenges that came up for me during my PhD took me by surprise. Get a therapist! Any other thoughts or comments? 

Doing a PhD was on the whole a really fulfilling experience, and I don't regret doing one. But ultimately I could do my current job without one. I guess I kind of wish I'd known about social research careers as an undergrad: I went into my MA and PhD with the goal of being a researcher, I had no idea I could do research as a career outside of academia until the second or third year of my PhD. 

Related interviews:

Interview with an Associate at the Children’s Center for Communication, Beverly School for the Deaf

Interview with a think tank researcher

Interview with a data scientist

Recent interviews:

Interview with an Online Linguistics Teacher

Interview with an Academic Linguist

Interview with a TV Writer

Interview with a Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights & Analytics

Interview with a Social Media Lead

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Interview with a Communications and Engagement Assistant

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork.

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Senior Analyst, Strategic Insights & Analytics

A lot of students come to university thinking they’ll study something that directly relates to the job they’ll end up with; teachers study teaching, software engineers study software engineering, psychologists study psychology. What is much more common, especially for linguistics students, is that you’ll end up with a job such as ‘Analyst’, a rather under-specified job title that requires the kinds of problem solving skills and structured thinking that studying things like linguistics trains you to do. Today’s interview is with Edward Wilford, who is a Senior Analyst for Arm, a company that specialises in the microprocessors and chips needed for modern gadgets. 

What did you study at university?

I have a BA in English Language and Linguistics from Durham, and an MPhil in Linguistics from Cambridge. My thesis was an examination of the syntax of the Breton auxiliary system, from a Minimalist perspective. Undergraduate was very heavy in syntax and morphology as well. What is your job?

I work in market intelligence and forecasting, mostly corralling messy data and finding ways to arrange it so that we can make sense of it. I also do lots and lots of research into the microelectronics market, and a fair amount of modelling/forecasting as well. How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

I believe with all my heart that once you learn to analyse something, you can apply that knowledge in almost infinite ways. I previously worked as an analyst looking at niche financial products, and as a media auditor, analysing how our clients spent their advertising budgets and figuring the value they received. Knowing how to formulate questions, to see patterns, to add and subtract layers of abstraction as needed, and to rapidly reformulate when you hit a brick wall, all came from my linguistic training.

What was the transition from university to work like for you?

I left knowing that a career in academia was not for me. But my first job was literally writing a book on business; a large company had discovered they had about a dozen different glossaries/dictionaries and wanted someone with lexicographic experience to combine, expand and harmonise all of them into a standard format, both to make them more accurate and useful as a reference, but also to help in defining tasks to automate. There were very linguistic-y questions to ask and answer, such as 'what exactly is a "delivery"?' or an "attempted delivery"? Everything had to be fully spelled out and also entered into a paradigm. In the compiling I had to write definitions for lots of different business terms, and it was a tremendous crash course in the field.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

I wish I had taken advantage of more of the ancillary training that was offered, throughout my education. I had the chance to do an introduction to statistical methods, and didn't, because it wasn't directly useful in my work at the time. Training like that is always valuable. No one regrets knowing about statistics. And I really wish I had taken advantage of the BSL courses at Durham because I think everyone should learn to sign. Any other thoughts or comments?

I have two small kids, and sometimes I feel like the true legacy of my linguistic education is being incredibly relaxed about my own kids' language acquisition. It's a serious benefit.  

Related interviews:

Interview with a Data Analyst

Interview with a Data Scientist

Interview with a Technical Writer

Recent interview:

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Interview with a Communications and Engagement Assistant

Interview with a Technical Writer

Interview with a Stay-at-home Mom and Twitch Streamer

Interview with a Peer Review Program Manager

Check out the full Linguist Jobs Interview List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews 

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Social Media Lead

Leaving graduate studies is usually not an easy decision. I appreciate that Brice Russ has taken the time to share with us how he weighed up the limitations of academic work/life balance and then took a thoughtful approach to volunteering and exploring alternative careers that reflect a range of his interests. Brice’s story includes many of the lessons that can be handy for your job search (internships, volunteering, LinkedIn good luck), but it also highlights something about modern jobs that isn’t always clear when you’re looking at jobs from the outside: many jobs involve working for a company that provides services to another company or business. Brice shares his experience of working for NASA while not actually being employed by NASA.  

You can follow Brice on Twitter (@BriceRuss) or check out his website.

What did you study at university?

I studied sociolinguistics, particularly language variation on the Internet. My first grad school qualifying paper (at Ohio State) focused on using geotagged data from Twitter to map American English dialects—which was still a fairly new idea back in 2010, so it picked up a bit of press—and my second paper looked at how linguistic styles were perceived differently on Twitter vs. Facebook. I'd always known I was less than certain about following the academic career path, and I realized about halfway through my Ph.D. program that I was more interested in sharing cool studies with other people than actually doing the research myself. So I took a year-long leave of absence to pursue work in scientific communication, coming back for a semester in 2013 to write and defend my M.A.

My undergrad was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I majored in linguistics with a minor in English. I always liked to say that I majored in linguistics because it let me study everything—history, physics, psychology, etc.—but I was fortunate enough to have some fantastic professors, particularly Walt Wolfram (just down the road at NC State) and Connie Eble, who helped me fall in love with the field.

What is your job?

So right now, I'm a social media specialist for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center; NASA has about ten centers across the nation (you're probably familiar with Kennedy in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston), and Marshall specializes in developing rocket technology and propulsion systems, among other areas. Like most NASA centers, Marshall's workforce is split up between civil servants/government employees and contractors, and I'm in the latter group; I'm currently employed with Media Fusion as their Social Media Lead for our NASA contract.

Day-to-day, I create social content for Marshall's Facebook and Twitter accounts, highlighting NASA news features and promoting events like rocket launches or the recent Perseid meteor shower. I track notable social engagements and social post metrics, and work with Marshall's social media public affairs officer (on the civil servant side) to develop our overall social strategy and collaborate with other NASA centers. I've been working for home more or less continuously for the last 18 months, but in the Before Times, I'd be all around our center doing everything from taking photos of the POIC, "research central" for the International Space Station, to interviewing students on-camera for our Rover Challenge student competition.

By the time you read this, though, there's a good chance I'll be in a new role! I just accepted a position on NASA HQ's digital team (on contract with MORI Associates) to help support social media across the agency, which I'm incredibly excited about.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

I think the biggest way my linguistics background has helped me in social/digital media is in reminding me that communication is a two-way street, even when you're writing for a large organization or a major brand. Even small changes to your message can have a big impact on how they're perceived, so when you're putting together a tweet or a blog post or whichever, it's important to keep your audience in mind and style your content accordingly. I'm also a bit of an analytics nerd, and my quantitative/statistics work in linguistics definitely helped me get more comfortable with data on a day-to-day basis. You're probably not going to need an advanced stats background in most communications roles—I don't think I've ever run an ANOVA test or anything like that at work—but having that general data literacy is a huge help for studying your social products, figuring out how to improve them, and making the case to the folks above you in the org chart.

What was the transition from university to work like for you? 

Before I left academia, I'd been doing some volunteer work on the side to get some actual experience in science communication. I've been a life-long space fan and went to a handful of space advocacy conferences in undergrad (check out SEDS if this interests you!), so I started helping a couple of space non-profits, Yuri's Night and the National Space Society, with their social accounts, web content, etc. Even so, it took me a good 10 months on the market to find my first full-time job in science communication—through a post on LinkedIn, of all things. After that, I was able to build my networks a bit, which helped me get my foot in the door for a couple of my future opportunities (like doing digital media for the Science news team), but landing that first job was definitely the hardest!

One of the main reasons I moved out of academia (aside from the depressing employment prospects) was that I personally found it very difficult to maintain work-life balance; there was always another paper to read, another set of quizzes to grade. Working in communications (especially social media) isn't necessarily compatible with a predictable, 9-5 schedule, but I've definitely found it a lot easier to keep my free time to myself than I did in grad school.

Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

For NASA, specifically, I wish someone had told me to start looking for work with them earlier! I was aware in undergrad that NASA had a robust internship program, but I figured that all their internships were for engineers and scientists—when in fact, college students can pursue internships in public affairs, education/STEM outreach, and any other department that helps keep NASA running. I also wish I'd known that many (most?) jobs in NASA communications are with contractors, not just the civil service positions you see on USAJobs. Tracking those contractor positions down can be a lot harder sometimes, and they have their pros and cons, but if anyone's thinking about a communications job with NASA and has any particular questions, feel free to shoot me an email.

Any other thoughts or comments?

Now is actually a really interesting time to get involved in digital media. Many organizations are moving past the mentality that they have a website, they have a Facebook page, and never the twain shall meet. Instead, they're recognizing that there are a host of different platforms online, from email newsletters to messenger apps to news aggregators, that may or may not traditionally be classified as "social media" but are important to be aware of if you want to get your message out. There's an emerging discipline, often referred to as "audience editing" or just "audience", that harnesses this viewpoint to help news outlets and similar groups build a holistic digital presence that listens to its readers—Bobby Blanchard, with the Texas Tribune, has a great slide deck highlighting how he does this in journalism. It's been a tough decade for journalists and other publishers, naturally, so helping create strategies that get quality information out to the public (in my case, news on the benefits and promise of space exploration) can be really rewarding.

Related interviews:

Interview with an Internet Linguist

Interview with a Marketing Content Specialist

Interview with a Communications Specialist

Recent interviews:

Interview with a CEO of a SaaS company

Interview with a Communications and Engagement Assistant

Interview with a Technical Writer

Interview with a Stay-at-home Mom and Twitch Streamer

Interview with a Peer Review Program Manager

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Legislative Drafter

This month’s interview is specifically about the field of law, and how Marian found a niche within this larger industry that lets her engage with language in a very real way. Even if you’re not interested in law specifically, this provides a really nice illustration of the fact that there are many fields of work that have a specific subset of jobs and careers that might be more in line with your interests!

What did you study at university?

My undergraduate degree was in Language and Linguistics from Queen's University (Canada).  I took linguistics courses and also studied Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. After undergrad, I went to law school at the University of Victoria, then articled and was called to the bar in British Columbia. I am now a legislative drafter, although my official job title is "Legislative Counsel".

What is your job?

As legislative counsel, I write and provide legal advice about legislation. Ministries give instructions about their policy (eg. make a new program to provide X, change the appeal process for Y,  expand the people eligible for this benefit), and I draft the bill, regulation or order that will give effect to that policy. My job is to find the most accurate, clearest, and most concise way of saying something. I also have to consider the legal effect of what I'm writing. It's challenging but fun. Basically, I get to play with words and logic puzzles all day.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

I think that my linguistics training probably helps me with clear writing: a foundation in syntax helps me understand the different parts of a legislative sentence and look out for potential ambiguity. But more than anything, I think it's the underlying love of language that drew me to linguistics that makes legislative drafting such a good fit. Do you have any advice that you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

My advice would be to consider this career if you love linguistics and are also in law. Although I also enjoyed litigation and solicitor work, I wish I had known sooner that legislative drafting was a career option. For someone who loves language and linguistics but then goes on to study law, it's an ideal combination. I remember having that "these are my people!" feeling in my undergraduate linguistics program, and I have that feeling again now.

Any other thoughts or comments?

If you're not planning on going into law but are drawn to the idea of working with legislation, you could also go into legislative editing. Legislative editors edit the regulations, bills and orders that we draft - they can turn something mediocre into something great. If you love language and have an eye for detail, you would probably enjoy legislative editing.

Related interviews:

Interview with a Juris Doctor (Master of Laws) student

Recent interview:

Interview with a Stay-at-home Mom and Twitch Streamer

Interview with a Peer Review Program Manager

Interview with an Associate at the Children’s Center for Communication, Beverly School for the Deaf

Interview with a Metadata Specialist and Genealogist

Interview with a Developer Advocate

Check out the full Linguist Jobs Interview List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews  

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Metadata Specialist and Genealogist

As someone who has built language archives, and spent a lot of time poking around in archives built by other people, I appreciate the importance of well-structured meta-data. It’s good meta-data that tells you what is in the giant pile of data you’re working with, making the whole process much less of a needle-in-a-haystack scenario. Mallory Manley is doing the important work of managing data across multiple languages in the field of genealogy. I appreciate Mallory’s honesty about the challenges of stepping sideways out of linguistics, and sharing that experience with us in this interview. You can follow Mallory on Twitter (@ManleyMallory).

What did you study at university?

I studied a Master of Arts in Linguistics at the University of Essex. My favorite subject in linguistics is morphology, so I continue to study it on my own. What is your job?

I work for a genealogy company as a cataloguer. I receive digital copies of historical records and I organize them by place, record type (birth certificates, census records, etc), and year to prepare them to be published online. I am responsible for records coming from Scandinavia and South Eastern Europe. How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

When I applied for this job, I had no working knowledge of the Scandinavian languages or the languages of Eastern Europe, except for Russian. I definitely oversold my abilities by stating in my cover letter that I could learn any language. But knowing how to analyse language has helped me learn these languages. And being able to identify patterns in language helps me read those documents when I get stuck on words I don't know or simply can't decipher. Learning the orthographies of each of these languages has also proved to be a challenge, partly because orthographies change over time, and partly because many of these languages didn't have a standardized orthography at all until relatively recently. So even though I don't use my linguistics training as much as I hoped I would in a career, it has helped me succeed in this role. Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university? 

I think when we're young and planning for our future, we get specific ideas about how our career path will look, and it becomes the only path we envision. I had to learn to be flexible and accept changes. My first year of college, I wanted to be a lexicographer (which I still think would be an awesome job). I ended up instead building a career in genealogy, and though it's not where I expected or planned to be, it has been fulfilling and joyful.

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