racataca
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Posts posted by racataca
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1 hour ago, historicallinguist said:
You definitely should not put all the interests you mentioned above in your PS. Stay focused on one or two sub fields (if two, between some sort of interface type of thing), and write about one or two particular thing(s) in the sun field(s) in your PS.
UCLA’s anthropology phd program is probably a better fit for you than is its linguistics phd program.
Also, for god’s Sake, please do not say you want to work with only a particular awesome prof X in department Y in awesome UNiveristy Z, as admission is made by a committee not a particular prof. You probably want to mention profs xyz and explain how THESE profs could support your interests to show your fit with the department as a whole.
Haha no, I would definitely not put all of this in a SoP - I'd tailor that to the dept I'm applying to and mentioning the professors in that department that interest me. But that's super helpful with regards to what perspective I should write from!
I'll definitely check out UCLA's anthropology program!
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Hey all! I've said I'm applying forty times before, but this year I ACTUALLY AM.
I'm located in SoCal and am so, SO ready to get this ball rolling. My research interests are language, culture and identity (and as a part of this, code-switching); Korean linguistics; Spanish linguistics; psycholinguistics; semantic processing between native speakers of multiple languages and second language learners in adulthood; phonology (this is really focused - the transformation of nasals into stops in onsets in Korean), and issues regarding codeswitching (syntax, identity, etc.)
My stats are:
Undergrad: International Relations, 3.4 GPA
Grad School: MA in Linguistics with a 4.0. I wrote my capstone on the hypothesis that music and language involved from a common musical, proto-linguistic faculty, and that the necessary intonation in polar interrogatives in Korean are fossilizations of that.
Bilingual Spanish speaker, Korean speaker at somewhere between B1-B2.
Original research presented twice at the grad school symposium, as well as the Language, Interaction, and Social Order conference (where I had to defend myself against Mary Bucholz lololol)
Was a graduate assistant three semesters in a row at grad school, in addition to winning a merit scholarship for tuition and in addition to winning a research travel scholarship to the conference (both competitive).
Five years experience teaching at the college level, two additional years teaching adults topics in linguistics
GRE: Haven't taken the real thing yet, but my diagnostic scores on the test were 160V, 155Q, 6W, so I'm hoping to raise the V and Q scores by about 5 points each after studying for the test I'll take in July.
I can count on good letters of rec, and I can count on someone coaching me through a good SoP.
Schools I'm looking at:
UCSB (Language & Identity w/ Mary Bucholz in an ideal world)
UCLA (Semantics w/ Jesse Harris or Language Acquisition / Semantics / Phonology with Sun Ah Jun)
USC (Psycholinguistics w/ Elsi Kaiser, Korean Linguistics and Identity w/ Andrew Simpson)
Stanford (Lang and Identity w/ Rob Podesva)
Berkeley (Language Contact w/ Lev Michael)
UC Davis (Language & Society w/ Robert Bayley, Language & Identity w/ Julia Menard-Warwick)
U Hawaii at Manoa (Bilingualism w/ Kamil Deen)
UC San Diego (Acquisition w/ Grant Goodall)
I'm also considering applying to some East Asian Language / Korean Studies PhD programs at UCLA and at U Hawaii Manoa but would need to get my language skills up to par (for UCLA I'd probably have to go through the MA in order to be considered for the PhD).
So a couple of questions:
1. Not many people list code switching as their primary research interest, so I'm wondering if I should seek out faculty who work in bilingualism OR in syntax, both of which could facilitate research in code switching?
2. Is this too many schools? No enough schools?
3. How should my application improve from the stats given?
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So I am finally graduating with my MA after a million years of being in thesis limbo, and am looking at my next step, which is hopefully a doctorate.
My thesis was on theories of language evolution and whether language and music evolved from a similar proto-musical faculty (looking at a lot of work by Jackendoff, Fitch, etc.), and tested the capacity of both Korean and non-Korean speakers to correctly interpret non-propositional information found in the rising intonation necessary to make a certain type of polar interrogative in Korean (where there is no syntactical or morphological change to indicate it's an interrogative). Spoiler alert: everyone knows when your voice goes up, you're asking a question.*
Anyway, I'm interested in continuing that type of work, but am also interested in the semantic processing of late second language learners, code switching, identity performance, and Korean linguistics in general (although I'm about an intermediate speaker). I speak Spanish fluently, was a Peace Corps volunteer, have a 4.0 in my MA program, a 3.4 in my undergrad (rough), have taught ESL/EFL for a combined 8 years and have been teaching linguistics and pedagogy at a TEFL certification course for the past year. I also presented a pretty mediocre paper re: Twitter, One Direction fans, and identity construction at a conference where I accidentally got into an argument with Mary Bucholz.
I don't know how competitive I am as an applicant (haven't been published, my undergrad GPA isn't amazing), nor do I know what my dissertation would be on, but I want to roll around in linguistics research for the rest of my life, and I want to teach it to other people and impart passion into them too.
So GradCafe people, I'm reaching out to you -- do you know of any programs off the top of your head you'd recommend? I know I should try for the best program possible with the most funding, but I'm trying to keep it realistic given my credentials. My professors are gunning for me, but surprise, I'm a millennial woman with major Imposter Syndrome. ?
*you know, barring all the other environments that would force rising intonation
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Since starting my MA, my focus has really shifted a great deal, and I'm interested in studying the evolution of language and its similarities and differences with music/syntax vs. musical theory. I'm not sure how to even go about googling this, but I was wondering if anyone had heard about departments where similar studies might be going on? I have to eventually apply for my PhD (who knows when), and have no idea where to start looking.
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Hey everyone,
I am currently a second-year MA students at NEIU here in Chicago. My husband, an ESL speaker and physician from Panama, has finally found a steady job in Schiller Park and also at UIC while he studies for his boards, and as such, we're both hesitant to move too far away from the area. I told this to my department and my advisor recommended I look at NIU for Critical Discourse Analysis. I'm particularly interested in political discourse and language used in the construction of identities in revolutionary activity.
I've been told that NIU is great for this, and that Betty Birner on the faculty would be a great POI.
Has anyone had any experience at NIU in this field? I'd love to hear about it because on the surface, it seems to resolve all my problems!
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Howdy! I'm glad I'm not the only one with an absurdly long list of schools (9). My area of interest: the revitalization of languages indigenous to the North American continent. I'll list off my schools, as well as the language I'd study there (I'd rather geographically close to a body of native-language speakers than to go to a particular university majorly far away from any such population).
University of Hawai'i at Manoa (MA)
-Hawaiian or Hawaiian Sign Language (I have a background in American Sign Language)
University of Montana (MA)
-Apssalooke (Crow)
University of Oregon (MA)
-Chinook Wawa, Santiam, Wasco-Wishram, or Tenino
University of Oklahoma (MA in Applied Linguistic Anthropology)
-Kiowa (They have a KILLER Native languages program, and you can take Kiowa for foreign language credit)
Eastern Michigan University (MA)
-Unsure
Northeastern Illinois University (MA--though this school is sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel)
-Unsure (Though there is an active Native community in and around Chicago)
University of California Santa Barbara (PhD)
-Unsure (Sadly, there are dozens of endangered languages in CA, so I haven't picked on as yet)
University of Arizona (PhD)
-Maricopa, Mohave, Jicarilla, or Acoma-Laguna
University of Wisconsin Madison (PhD)
-Oneida or Menominee
Are there any programs I should take off/add to this behemoth of a list? I'm applying straight from undergrad, so I'm a wee bit nervous (hence the neurotic preparedness)
Too many people discount NEIU because of its admissions requirements and fairly open admissions policy; I'm a current student there, who will probably be applying to PhD programs to study identity construction/discourse analysis, and I can say that the faculty here are some of the most supportive, knowledgeable people I know and that you truly get from the program exactly what you put into it. As an attendee at a school that "scrapes the bottom of the barrel," I have been invited to international conferences around the country to present work I've done under the guidance of my mentors in this program.
If you're going straight from undergrad and want a comprehensive MA that greatly prepares you for higher levels of study, on top of the fact that it's incredibly affordable, then I would recommend NEIU easily. I see you're interested in Native Language Preservation and it's really too bad that you missed John Boyle, who just left this semester, as he is a leader in the field.
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Total apologies in advance if this is tl;dr.
Hey everyone. I'm just looking for some insight because I desperately want to study linguistics at the graduate level and hopefully eventually earn my PhD from a decently respected institution, but I'm wondering about the futility of my situation, given my background.
I went to a decent Jesuit school in Chicago (there's only one...) that didn't offer a linguistics program, but it wouldn't have mattered because I didn't even know what linguistics was at that point in my life. My sophomore year I transferred to an art school in Chicago, but immediately transferred back because I'd rather write reports than withstand critiques every week.
I majored in International Relations, which simultaneously allowed me to take all the language classes I wanted. I took two semesters of upper-level courses in German, as well as two semesters of beginning Arabic, and three semesters of Spanish which put me through Spanish IV.
Due to my gluttony for punishment, I worked full-time during school, volunteered as an ESL teacher with the school's Literacy center, volunteered as a darkroom supervisor, and took 18 credit hours nearly every semester. Freshman year was dismal, but there was a definite upward trend from Sophomore year on, which resulted in me graduated with a 3.4 uGPA and a 3.25 GPA in my field. If I factor language into my International Relations GPA, that raises it to 3.47. My foreign language GPA on its own is a 3.81 (which, thinking back, leads me to wonder why I didn't major in a foreign language in the first place).
So I know those aren't incredibly strong stats. I graduated in 2007, and since then I've
--Been a Peace Corps volunteer, where a large portion of my service was centered on teaching ESL and which introduced some awesome, endangered languages to me that are super fascinating.
--Been an ESL instructor at a high school in Panama.
--Been an ESL instructor at two universities in Panama.
--Worked as an ESL instructor at a big corporate language company that sells their program at Kiosks in malls (yellow box, blue logo, its name is taken from an ancient stone that has three languages written on it), with an eventual promotion.
I really want to study linguistics because it fascinates me, and luckily that job will pay for it because they see it as pertinent to their interests. There's a school near my house which, as far as I know, is unranked for its graduate linguistic program is concerned, but the professors there are doing research in fields that interest me (sociolinguistics, endangered language preservation, historical linguistics).
Indulge me, or on the flip side, slap me across the face with reality: if I can do well in this (unranked, unknown) program - I mean get published, write an awesome thesis, etc. - is there hope in my life to someday go on to do a PhD at a well-known institution? I'm primarily concerned with my undergrad GPA, and am finding any way to kind of rectify that situation.
As a linguist - can I make myself competitive for UCLA and USC?
in Anthropology Forum
Posted
So I posted something similar in the Linguistics forum because my MA is in Linguistics, and someone suggested I check out UCLA's anthropology department, which upon closer inspection, fits my interest SO much more closely, specifically with the work that Paul Kroskrity, Norma Mendoza-Denton, and Kyeyoung Park do; likewise, at USC Tok Thompson's work with pop culture and Lanita Jacob's work with Language, Identity and Culture are right up my alley, so I'm considering applying to them. That being said, my academic background is not in linguistics. My stats:
My research interests are language, culture and identity (and as a part of this, code-switching); Korean linguistics; Korean dialectal variety between the North and South, and borrowed languages in Korean pop culture (specifically Spanish).
My stats are:
Undergrad: International Relations, 3.4 GPA
Grad School: MA in Linguistics with a 4.0. I wrote my capstone on the hypothesis that music and language involved from a common musical, proto-linguistic faculty, and that the necessary intonation in polar interrogatives in Korean are fossilizations of that.
Bilingual Spanish speaker, Korean speaker at somewhere between B1-B2.
Original research presented twice at the grad school symposium, as well as the Language, Interaction, and Social Order conference where I wrote about language and the internet (specifically the construction of communities and the validation of feminist identities among One Direction fans on Twitter)
Was a graduate assistant three semesters in a row at grad school, in addition to winning a merit scholarship for tuition and in addition to winning a research travel scholarship to the conference (both competitive).
Five years experience teaching at the college level, two additional years teaching adults topics in linguistics
GRE: Haven't taken the real thing yet, but my diagnostic scores on the test were 160V, 155Q, 6W, so I'm hoping to raise the V and Q scores by about 5 points each after studying for the test I'll take in July.
I can count on good letters of rec, and I can count on someone coaching me through a good SoP. My question is - how can I make this application stronger, as a non-anthropologist?