buddingling23

This is very useful information. If I complete an MA program that specializes either in sociolinguistics or more specifically in English language linguistics, and then apply to PhD programs, are these master's degrees viewed favorably by the more common theoretical-oriented departments? I'm not questioning the quality of these institutions but how the specific sub-field is viewed.

I'll be brief. I majored in Linguistics in undergrad and did quite well. Since then I've been working in the field of media production. I am now considering going back to grad school in Linguistics, but here is the issue. I am not interested in theoretical syntax, phonology, or phonetics. I am passionate and professionally interested in dialectology and sociolinguistics. Specifically, I am interested in language variation within English and Romance languages and its status and relation to class and identity issues in the respective geographic areas. In my undergrad program, although I did well in all courses, I was deathly bored by many aspects of "formal" linguistics as it relates to the above-mentioned areas in the field. Don't get me wrong though: I have an affinity for detailed analysis and even tree structures, etc., but I am not interested in the sorts of questions phonologists and semanticists are generally interested in. I spoke to my undergrad advisor and he told me of a few programs that "do this kind of thing well," including UPenn and Stanford. In general however, he was a bit dismissive of the whole area I'm interested in and I generally got the impression that I just won't be able to find my niche in the American Linguistics field altogether. I did not write an undergrad thesis and have lost contact with most of those professors. Therefore, I'd probably be looking at an M.A. program to then transition and apply for a Ph.D. after doing more meaningful research. I've even considered one-year M.A. programs in the UK that seem to specialize more in sociolinguistics. Any thoughts on how I can get to study what I want to study?