Bringing Linguistics to Work: A Story Listening, Story Finding, and Story Telling Approach to Your Career

By Anna Marie Trester PhD

You were drawn to linguistics as a course of study because you enjoy tackling challenges, so why not bring the skills you have honed to professional challenges that speak to you? The world (of work) needs linguists!! Linguists possess a unique set of analytical skills that are applicable in any professional context, and which may also be brought to the process of finding the job. Who better to tackle the series of texts and interactions that comprise the job search than someone trained to critically analyze language? There’s no reason our cover letters shouldn’t be the very best ones out there!! In this book, I share stories of professional linguists to help answer the perennial question “linguistics? what can you do with that?” along with developmental activities to help you use the tools and skills you already possess to navigate your career next steps. “Here’s to what’s next!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483463698

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PhD

Copyright © 2017 Anna Marie Trester.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6368-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6369-8 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 4/26/2017

Preface

This small book grew out of two big personal commitments: my desire to help linguists transition to the world of work, and my enduring fascination with the power of story. It’s the product of hundreds of hours of conversation with undergraduate linguistics majors, linguistics graduate students, professors, career counselors, academic advisors, and professionally-oriented linguists at all stages of career. It tells the stories of people with linguistic training who have leveraged their skills to their advantage in the workplace, pursuing dynamic careers and solving meaningful problems in virtually every sector. I call these intrepid explorers career linguists, and as someone who is reading this book, I know that you are among them.

My approach is rooted in my own experience and perspective as an interactional sociolinguist, a teacher, a consultant, an academic advisor, a storyteller, and an improviser. In this book, I have two chief aims: to help linguists recognize how they can use their skills and training to forge their careers; and to give readers a sense of purposeful exploration and practical agency in the trajectory of their own career stories. My deepest thanks go to all those career linguists who generously shared their thoughts, experiences, and stories with me—for stories are among our greatest gifts, as I hope this book will make clear.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to so many who have aided and supported me along this journey.

To all of my students: improvisers, linguists, and storytellers. You have inspired me and challenged me. This book is yours, as it is borne out of the many conversations we have had over the years. Thank you for challenging me and pushing me into an area of research that I’ve found endlessly fulfilling.

To Natalie Schilling, for fanning the spark of this idea with just a little nudge of encouragement at a critical moment. To visionaries in the field of linguistics who are making space for these important conversations and encouraging us ask what it means to find meaningful work as linguists: Mary Bucholtz, Kira Hall, Monica McCauley, Julie Roberts, and Camilla Vasquez.

To Brice Russ, Kathleen Grace, and Michael Erard, for teaching me about the gift of the ask—and showing me the ropes of it. To Brian, for looking at so many drafts, and to Eleanor, Rob, and Jean Louise for nourishment (spiritual, intellectual, and literal). To Anastasia, for always being ready with an encouraging yes-and, and to Marissa, who looks for the why behind the why? To Alison Cline, Cynthia Gordon, Eden Hanson, Bob Laws, Sam Musser, Rob Pongsajapan, Gwen Rubenstein, and Julie Solomon, for your ongoing support and encouragement. You made this happen!

To Tubi and Paul at Rappahannock Coffee, for making the coffee so very strong, for the weekly etymology questions (keep ’em coming!), and for never getting tired of asking me, How’s the book coming?—even after it had been years in the making. To everyone at Civano Coffee House for accompanying me through the tunnel to finally get to that light at the end of it (I finished the thing sitting in the shade of your lovely back patio – to the gurgling of the majestic cobalt blue fountain)!

To my indefatigable editor, Jen McFadden—thank you for the gift of seeing both what was missing and what was possible. You transformed my book, and me in the process. To Allison and Lauren, for your clarity of vision!

To Lisa and David, Erica Frye, Bill, Di, and Susan and all others who have shared spaces (quiet, inspiring, magical, and restorative) in which to create this book. To the Porches, for rekindling my writer’s spirit, to Jenn for trusting that it was there and helping me find it, and to all the fabulously talented, strong, and creative spirits that I have met there over the years. To the Country Inn in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, where the barbs and snags of writing get smoothed out in the embrace of wood-paneled walls and pixie-lighted gardens. Even when all the lights go out, I am left with a bottle of full-bodied red to sit in a corner and create—and I can’t think of anything better!

To Jessica for building and maintaining a home for story, and to Fuego for sharing the gifts of improv.

This book is dedicated to my parents: Dr. Eugene and Mary Frances Trester. Thank you for teaching me about the value (and joy) of work.

1.   Introduction

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

– Howard Thurman, author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader

The world of work needs linguists, but most would-be employers don’t know it. And employers aren’t the only ones in the dark. Linguistics students may intuitively sense that they have a role to play in the world of work, but lack a clear idea of what that would look like. Or they may have trouble finding people who can offer concrete guidance: students may be surrounded by supportive mentors well equipped to help them transition to an academic career, but when it comes to careers outside the walls of the ivory tower, many linguistics professors just aren’t sure how to help. And those who are best equipped to dispense career advice—career counselors and other experts in professional development—by and large don’t know what linguistics is, much less how it could be applied professionally. Those linguists who have found ways to use their linguistic skills and training in the working world are often isolated from academic institutions and departments, and therefore may not have opportunities to connect with students to share their valuable perspectives. The unfortunate consequence is that stories of career linguists are not reaching those who would benefit most from hearing them.

We linguists can’t expect employers to come looking for us. They are busy with the day-to-day demands of work, and most don’t know that they should be recruiting linguistics graduates. And yet the challenges and problems that tax their time and energy are often just the sort of puzzles that linguists are particularly good at solving. So if the world of work isn’t likely to come to us, we need to find our own ways in to the professional world. We need to bring linguistics to work!

Linguistics? What are you going to do with that?

If you have taken even a single course in linguistics, you have probably been asked this question at least once, and perhaps you’ve felt some frustration at trying to compress an entire field into a few sentences. Or perhaps you’ve got a snappy response ready when someone asks for the thousandth time how many languages you speak. Questions like these betray the widespread lack of awareness about our field and its relevance in just about any context. But it’s precisely for that reason that we should view these inquiries as valuable opportunities. Any question about the nature or purpose of our field is an invitation to share our perspective on the skills that we can bring to real-world problems.

Across our vast field, each linguist’s training offers a perspective on language that can translate to unique insights in other arenas. If you are a phonologist, you know how to make patterns out of what might look or sound like chaos to the untrained observer. If you are a syntactician, you know how to draw close comparisons between things that may appear to be quite different on the surface. If you are a semanticist, you are able to use powerful abstractions to conceptualize the composition of meaning. If you are a computational linguist, you understand the role that language plays in the organization of knowledge and information. If you are an interactional sociolinguist, you know how much communication relies on linguistic and interactional subtleties operating well below the level of conscious awareness. If you are an applied linguist, you know a great deal about learning and memory. And this is just scratching the surface! We will talk more about linguists’ skills in Chapter 2 and throughout this book you will see them exemplified in the stories of career linguists. But as these stories show, no matter what your particular brand of linguistics, you have access to a unique skillset that can be productively applied to solving just about any challenge that speaks to you. And even if you are working in an academic context, there are ways that you are drawing on your training in and knowledge about language that extend beyond the content area. All linguists are trained to think abstractly and objectively about complex problems. You identify underlying systems and discern ways that they interrelate, and you use those orientations to find patterns, make predictions, and generate solutions. In this book, I ask you to use that skillset to examine your choices, analyze your possibilities, and shape your own career. I am an interactional sociolinguist, so I tend to conceptualize both language and career primarily in terms of interactional moments. In my many years of working with career-oriented linguists, I’ve recognized an important opportunity that I think more linguists should be exploiting: basically, we linguists need to be having more conversations about career. We need to participate in open, broad-ranging discussions about professional applications of our skills that invite curiosity and establish interpersonal and interdisciplinary connections. We need to listen for, find, and tell career stories. These interactions are a crucial means for discovering what we can offer the world of work. They give us insights into where we are needed and the kinds of thigs we might be doing. They open our eyes to possibilities we might never have considered. Importantly, they afford us opportunities to practice talking about ourselves, to gauge how our message is coming across and adjust it, and to solicit feedback and advice. They are also an accessible and necessary way to begin a career journey.

My perspective primes me to look very closely at the ways that linguistic and interactional forms relate to function. Questions, for example, provide the perfect structural and interactional segue to effective storytelling. For those of us seeking to broaden the understanding of the range of contexts in which our skills may be applied, questions like what’s linguistics? and what are you going to do with that? are invitations to talk about our field and to answer the underlying question, how is linguistics relevant to the world I live in and the problems I face? When we take advantage of conversational opportunities to share career stories, we can make narrative and interactional connections between linguists and the world of work. When we engage others’ interest and showcase our own passions, we can be effective ambassadors for the field and for ourselves. In this book, I argue that stories are essential tools for exploring, navigating, and establishing your own path as a career linguist. Through listening to the stories others tell, discovering stories in the texts, images and other media around you, and telling stories of your own in various forms and for various purposes, you claim agency in your own career story and gain control over your professional trajectory.

In addition to being a student of interaction, I’m also a storyteller, an ethnographer, a discourse analyst, a teacher, a trainer, and a consultant. I’m an improviser, having studied and performed improvisational theater for nearly 15 years now. And as you’ll see throughout this book, all of these experiences color my perspective on career. The practical approach I offer here unites linguistic skills, improv philosophy, and a deep appreciation for the power of story. Each of these makes for a powerful and constructive orientation to problem-solving; when they are used together to shape and direct your career journey, they make for an effective, perhaps even transformative toolkit.

There is a great deal more that could be said about the ideas and concepts that underlie this book, and you may wish to explore these themes in more detail. To that end, each chapter concludes with a section called Exploring Further, which offers annotated suggestions for further reading.

Transcending the academy

More than thirty years ago, sociolinguist Roger Shuy framed a challenge for career-oriented linguists: As a result of its isolative pattern of development, linguistics is now beginning to suffer from not having a natural apprenticeship domain, making it difficult for graduates to find work (Shuy 1984:1). His suggested solution was that linguists must transcend academic elitism to discover methods of breaking into such areas as information processing and retrieval, medicine, psychiatry, lexicography, publishing, the communications industry, and educational consulting (p. 1).

Writing three decades later, after hundreds of career conversations with students and professionals across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, I’ve found that Shuy’s critique still resonates today. Our field still tends to undervalue outward-facing orientations that prioritize practical application instead of theory and research. And like Shuy, I see myriad ways in which linguists can (and do) apply their linguistic skills and training to practical problems. But I’m not convinced that breaking into professional contexts or transcending elitism are particularly helpful formulations of the problem. Instead, I see the problem as one of initiation, access, opportunity, and (especially) interaction. In my view, professional linguists—or, as I like to call them, career linguists—have an important role to play in bringing the next generation of linguists into the workplace. Career linguists’ placements and perspectives give them great vantage points for identifying the professional opportunities that exist for linguists, as well as for spying the problems that linguists are uniquely positioned to solve. Their input can be a crucial source of information, insight, and inspiration, and aspiring career linguists need to be proactive in seeking out their forerunners, who are in an excellent position to help. A key purpose of this book is to help you identify professional linguists who can help bring you into their world of work and to help you become, in turn, an ambassador for the next generation.

It is important that we view professional opportunities with curiosity and a sense of possibility. Too often, I’ve heard students express a sense of dread and even shame as they have contemplated careers outside the academy. Or conversely, to say that they don’t need to think about career because they are heading towards a career in academia. While academic linguistics is often storied as the norm, it’s certainly not the only career trajectory for a linguistics graduate—nor is it even the most common one. But not only does it do the profession a disservice to not consider this path with the same curiosity and inquiry as we would any other path, given that more people build professional lives off the tenure track than on it, we may need to reevaluate our perceptions of normal. Indeed, both the professional world and the field of linguistics stand to gain when career linguists enter any workforce. Seeking out practical, non-academic uses for a linguistics degree should never be thought of as settling for a lesser career. Finding ways of applying linguistics outside the academy presents intriguing, compelling, and motivating challenges, and the possibilities for practical applications and real-world problem-solving are rich and varied. Ultimately, I advocate for a conceptualization of career that asks: Which challenges speak to you? —then identifying the assets and resources we linguists can bring to solving these. I encourage job-seeking linguists to focus on opportunities, not obstacles, and to keep an open mind about what skills and experiences might turn out to be relevant in the long run.

I also speak from my own experience as a career linguist. From my very first linguistics class in 1996, I’ve sought to bridge the gap between university linguistics and working-world applications. My own career path has carried me back and forth between the two: as a teacher, academic advisor, and career and communication consultant, I’ve helped scores of linguistics students make the important transition to working professional. And as a consultant, I now work on solving linguistic and communication problems in work and workplaces of all sorts, including in universities and with academics. In the process, I’ve discovered that many of the same things that I most loved doing as an academic are still essential parts of my working life. I still conduct ethnographic research, and I still spend my time researching, thinking, writing, and talking about the meanings conveyed by the subtleties of language choice. And I have never stopped using my skills in instructional design, facilitation, and curricular development. I’m still a teacher, but now I teach in a much wider variety of contexts, and my assignments and evaluations are targeted toward particular real-world problems. I’ve discovered valid and valuable ways to teach learners who not only have immediate need for what I teach them, but who also go on to share what they learn with others. I find great satisfaction in these new kinds of teaching and learning, but I can also see clearly how the work I do today is an extension of the interests, orientations, and skills that drove my early academic work in linguistics. For me, bringing linguistics to work has been a process of ongoing and often thrilling discovery. It’s that sense of possibility and agency that I hope to share with you in this book.

What does a career linguist need?

The aim of this book is to empower linguistics graduates to become career linguists and authors of their own career stories. The approach I offer here involves three central components:

• An improvisational mindset

• A linguistic lens

• A story practice

The improvisational mindset that I ask you to bring to career education, career exploration, and professional development is borrowed from the philosophy of improvisational theater, or improv. If you’ve heard of American institutions like The Second City or shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway, or if you’ve watched any long- or short-form performance being made up on the stage right in front of you, you’ve got some idea