French Linguistics anyone

[Francophile1]

Hi all I am looking for programs (PhD) in french linguistics...please help!

So far I found these:

UT Austin

Indiana U

illinois urbana

ucdavis 

(u of brit columbia)Canada...

any others? any Ivy's who do linguistics through French department?

[Francophile1]

also found these:

Purdue

Louisianan STate, 

Georgia

Maryland...but still none in the Ivy's.

[Bleep_Bloop]

The ivies don't really focus on linguistics in language departments (although I've been told that Yale, Harvard, Penn, and Cornell have high-ranking linguistics departments, but they would know much more about that in the linguistics forum). There isn't really a stigma against it, but I've yet to meet someone from these circles--student or factulty--that doesn't study cultural production and theory in some form or another. Also keep in mind that a number of the ivies don't have independent french departments (off the top of my head, Harvard, Cornell, and Penn are Romance Studies, Princeton used to have a Romance department but Spanish/Portuguese broke off and French is now grouped with Italian). Dartmouth doesn't have any PhD programs in the humanities that I'm aware of. I'm not working in French but I've interacted with students and professors from some of the Romance Studies departments I mentioned above and like I said, to my knowledge the focus is exclusively on cultural production and theory (Cornell is particularly heavy on theory, Bruno Bosteels is there after all). A quick glance at program descriptions and faculty at Yale, Brown and Columbia confirms that they don't focus on linguistics either. If you really want to forego literature and focus entirely on linguistics, I'd strongly suggest ditching french and romance departments and training as a linguist...especially at this type of university.

[Francophile1]

LKS thanks so much. Yes I am in a lit based MA now, and I can totally see that I am not that interested in Lit. So if I would focus on Linguistics do you think it would be better to train in a direct linguistic department- this means it will be english based, and then do my research in the foreign languages that interest me, rather than go through a French Linguistic department?

I need to find this out because if so I will pursue Linguistics rather than looking through foreign language departments. It seems most linguistic professors in the French Linguistic departments get their degrees from Linguistic programs or one of the few on these lists above.

[Bleep_Bloop]

I suppose this depends on your research interests and background. If you're interested in studying linguistic theory and have the background for it then yes, I'd recommend a linguistics department. But there are also phd programs in applied linguistics, sla, etc. You'll have to ask around on the linguistics board or reach out to students/faculty in the field for more information. But what I will say is that it's not a case of one path being better than the other; like you said, faculty working in this field have degrees from both language and linguistics departments. Get an idea of what you would like to do (phonology, syntax, language acquisition, whatever) then do some research on programs in both fields and narrow them down by faculty and research fit. You can also apply to a mix of both language and linguistics departments.

[Soleil ت]

I was in your shoes a couple of years ago, and your list looks fairly exhaustive. There aren't many programs for us unfortunately; I would suggest the University of Florida, but they recently closed the PhD program. Good luck to you!

[mikazukipie]

Hi, current French Ling student here with some information you might find useful. If you'd like to chat PM me!

[PhDregret]

I was in the same boat as you years ago - I had done a BA in French & Linguistics and wanted to continue that for my MA and eventual PhD. Yet almost no grad programs in French in the US let you focus on linguistics instead of literature. I ended up doing an MA in Linguistics with a TESL certificate, which led me to teaching English in France so I could finally become fluent, then I went to Australia for my PhD in Applied Linguistics focusing on the teaching of French since the scholarships are great and there is no coursework at universities in the Commonwealth (it's all research so you can do whatever you want everyday!) So in short, you will probably need to do a degree in Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition instead and find an advisor that lets you focus on French rather than English linguistics. It's a real shame that US grad programs in languages only offer literature!

I will warn you though - having a degree in linguistics makes it hard to find academic jobs in French since almost every university wants someone who specializes in literature, and even linguistics jobs are hard to get without research in theoretical linguistics or TESOL (for applied ling). So even though I did the degrees I wanted to, I cannot find an academic job in either French or applied linguistics since my research doesn't exactly fit perfectly within either discipline. :/