I'm particularly interested in semantics but only starting to get into it seriously. LaChaise wrote:I've been working as a translator, but I'm currently working my way to a degree in linguistics and traductology. Otherwise, your choices are pretty much the same as a BA in English: TESOL, grad school or McDonald's.' Any other questions? Though sadly, I am not an expert in cunnilingus.' The answer to the second question is: 'If you have sufficient charisma and/or enough background in computational linguistics, you can probably get hired by a tech company. The answer to the first question is: 'Yes. I've put the 'cunning linguist' joke in the title, because 'are you a cunning linguist' is probably the question I get asked second-most often, a distant second after 'what the hell do you do with a BA in linguistics anyways?' I know a little bit about both subjects, but would probably answer most questions in either of those fields by googling, finding a paper, and summarizing it in lay terms. My weakest points are undoubtedly phonetics and signed languages.

I also know a fair bit about research on the origins of language, animal communication, neurolinguistics, second-language-learning, and typology.

I know a fair bit about semantics from where it interacts with syntax and pragmatics, but have never actually taken a course in it. I know a lot about syntax and phonology (the bread and butter of linguistics), as well as pragmatics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and computational linguistics. I'll be going to school for my PhD starting this fall, and while I don't want to discuss the particulars of what I'm doing (already, a savvy user could probably figure out my name based on information provided on this forum), I'm happy to answer general questions about linguistics. I discovered that I love computational linguistics: it's far easier to get publishable results, there are plenty of lucrative jobs inside and outside of academia, and best of all, the amount of human interaction required is less than any other subfield. Steven Pinker describes it as one of the most female-dominated subfields of the social sciences (it is), and like most female-dominated fields the work is harder and the opportunities for advancement fewer and less lucrative than other subfields.ДЄfter a bad experience with TESOL, I decided to take some courses in computational linguistics, which is undoubtedly the most lucrative linguistic subfield. In undergrad, I studied developmental psycholinguistics. It also seems like I might be the only person with a degree in linguistics on here.ДЄ little background. So based on the prescriptivism/descriptivism thread, there seems to be far more interest in linguistics here than I thought.

Cunning linguist joke