The Death of Linguistics

[GirlAloneWithHerself]

Hi everyone!

 

I currently live in the UK and have been applying for an MPhil in Linguistics. One thing that's struck me during my search is the complete lack of Linguistics courses that are now available in UK universities. Most Universities now only offer Linguistics at Undergraduate level and you're incredibly lucky to find a University that offers it at Postgrad level.

 

I was just wondering whether this was just a UK thing or whether it was global and why you guys thought that might be? Is it the case that people seem to think that Linguistics has investigated everything that it can? Is it because funding/focus is now shifting onto Maths and Science and less on Humanities?

 

I still think that Linguistics has loads more to uncover, but it doesn't seem like other people agree with that idea. It's an interesting and worrying thought.

[beefgallo]

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/linguistics

 

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/lel_students/postgraduate/index.php

 

https://www.tcd.ie/slscs/postgraduate/taught-courses/linguistics/

 

http://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/pros_graduates

 

http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/postgraduates

 

These are just universities whose names came to mind, I imagine there's more.

[Tairy]

Is it the case that people seem to think that Linguistics has investigated everything that it can? Is it because funding/focus is now shifting onto Maths and Science and less on Humanities?

 

On the first thing, if anyone thinks that, they are extremely and hilariously wrong. On the second, I can imagine this being true because in many ways linguistics is a little obscure, lots of people barely know it exists and many of those don't know what it does or why it's worth anything. That said, linguistics seems to be chugging along just fine in America for the meantime, though I don't know if the recent kerfuffle about the NSF potentially reducing "social science" funding will have a negative impact.

[nooneatall]

I did linguistics undergrad in the US and thought it was a bit bizarre that we had grad students in the same courses, enrolled through a different call number. Not sure if they were taking it to refresh their memory, but it was like there wasn't anything more advanced. I think the difference in grad-level linguistics comes through the novelty of research.